


And I hope you like it where I’m now

by zimriya



Series: kindling [4]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alpha Mark Lee (NCT), Anal Sex, Beta Suh Youngho | Johnny, Canon Compliant, Future Fic, M/M, Minor Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Minor Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Lee Taeyong, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:48:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22978630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zimriya/pseuds/zimriya
Summary: Johnny feels like after nearly eighteen years of idol life, he ought to finally be getting the long end of the stick.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Series: kindling [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1573561
Comments: 39
Kudos: 223





	And I hope you like it where I’m now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hexmen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexmen/gifts).



> Huge shout out to Hexmen for the beta and support on this one. I would not have been able to do it without you. Also, the pairing is once again... ALL YOUR FAULT. All... [checks smudged writing on hand] 40,000+ words of it. Thank you to Vic for consultation. 
> 
> This is set in the same universe as the fics in the series [the last flame of my life](https://archiveofourown.org/series/709125) but does not require reading any of them. Here is the universe [primer](https://zimriya.tumblr.com/aboau).
> 
> Title from Mark’s favorite lyrics from “Yestoday” by NCT U.

Johnny feels like after nearly eighteen years of idol life, he ought to finally be getting the long end of the stick. He has success, friends who are as good as family, and has made himself a home in this country that he didn’t grow up in, among this culture that was only his peripherally. His best friends are getting married. NCT 127 is one month away from a well-deserved full comeback, since everyone has finally discharged from the military. It is for all intents and purposes shaping up to be NCT’s _year_ , and Johnny thinks he should finally be seeing some sort of return on investment, or something. He should come into some money, meet someone who could be his soulmate, that sort of thing. 

Johnny is newly thirty-two, about to celebrate the wedding of two of his best friends in the entire world, and it has been _nearly eighteen years_. 

Johnny thinks it’s time.

Johnny is currently hiding in the restroom at a cake shop, desperately on the phone with his ex-girlfriend.

His ex-girlfriend from Chicago.

His ex-girlfriend from Chicago who is really more like a friend of a friend that he only went on exactly two dates with last year when NCT 127 were on tour in the USA.

She is, to put it lightly, very much _not impressed_. In fact, she mostly seems concerned about who’s going to be paying the phone bill.

“I am,” says Johnny, for what feels like the hundredth time. “Look. Stephanie—”

Stephanie hadn’t been convinced the first ninety-nine times Johnny assured her of this, and she certainly isn’t now. “It’s a lot of money,” she says. “I know you’re famous—” Her voice sounds tinny over the phone and across the ocean, but outside the bathroom Johnny can hear the sound of Jaehyun and Taeyong’s mothers, laughing and generally having a great time at their sons’ expense. He can hear the low rumble of Jaehyun and Taeyong’s voices, marrying together as perfectly as they will, next winter, and he can hear Mark, laughing at anything and everything. Even a dubious, unimpressed ex-girlfriend is preferable to that. Mark’s been laughing _all day_ , and Johnny’s stupid shoulders just keep trying to flinch; it’s hell on his posture; Jaehyun’s mother has started to look like she’s going to say something about it.

“Johnny?” Stephanie actually sounds concerned, so it’s likely Johnny’s been spacing out for a _long fucking time_ and should immediately stop daydreaming about Mark Lee’s damn laughter. “Look, it was great to see you last year and all, but we ‘broke up’ because you were tragically hung up on someone else, or whatever.” She makes the quotations sound audible all the way from Chicago. “Why would I go to a wedding with you?”

There’s a beat. Johnny can hear Mark laughing some more, and finally the low rumble of Jaehyun joining in, followed by Taeyong, whose voice raises in a question at the end.

“Well—” 

“I think he’s in the bathroom. I’ll go check on him. You’re right, he should taste this—Hyung!” calls Mark, the entire sentence fully audible to Johnny even in the bathroom, and Johnny nearly drops his phone in the toilet.

“Johnny?” Stephanie really does sound concerned. “Did you hang up? What the fuck, Johnny, it’s like two a.m.—”

“I need you go come to this wedding with me _because_ of the person I’m tragically still hung up on,” Johnny says in a rush, fumbling around frantically for paper towels like he’s actually used the bathroom. He wouldn’t put it past Mark not to just barge right in; they’re all close like that, after eighteen years.

“Johnny-hyung! You have to come taste this cake. We’re tied, and Jaehyun-hyung might actually call off the wedding and or commit matricide if we can’t decide!” 

There’s more laughter and general merriment from outside—Taeyong loudly pouting; Jaehyun assuring him he’s not going to call off the wedding—and Johnny feels his stomach start to roil. “Steph?” he says.

She’s silent.

“The wedding is in Malaysia—Penang?” Johnny says, trying to sell it. “It’s going to be really pretty. There’s a beach. A garden. It’s going to be intimate, only friends and family; no press.” He bites his lip. “Please?” Johnny whispers.

Stephanie releases a long sigh. “You’re paying for my ticket,” she says. “And you _owe_ me—”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Johnny says in a rush. “It’s on Valentine’s Day. Taeyongie’s a sap. I’ll email you the details—” He pulls the phone away from his face as his friend starts sputtering about the date.

“Valentine’s Day? You mean like next year? Thanks for the heads up, John, but I thought you meant like next week—”

Johnny hits the end call button before she can finish her sentence, in time for Mark to push into the bathroom, brows furrowed. His hair is long and dark and falling into his eyes. He tilts his head at Johnny.

Johnny hastily pockets his phone. “Hi, Mark,” he says. “I was just washing my hands.”

Mark shoots him an odd look, but only says, “Hey, was that English? Who were you talking to?”

“My mom,” Johnny says with a smile that feels too brave for his face. “Anyway, um, you were talking about cake?” He puts the paper towels into the trash can and pushes open the door to the bathroom, Mark following behind him. “You know the bathroom is only supposed to be for one person—”

Mark waves a hand. “We’re like family,” he says. “You’ve seen me naked.”

Johnny winces, but manages somehow to keep walking. “Yeah, well.”

Mark doesn’t seem all that bothered. “What’d your mom want?” he says. “Isn’t it, like, two a.m. in Chicago?”

Johnny shrugs, making eye contact first with Jaehyun’s mom, then Taeyong’s mom, and smiling. “Oh, you know,” he says, taking in the rearrangement that’s gone on since he’d fled to the bathroom.

Taeyong’s mom and Jaehyun’s mom have finally left Taeyong alone, it seems, whispering together happily on the other side of the table from Jaehyun and Taeyong themselves. The two of _them_ seem to be engaging in some frankly indecent eye contact. Every so often Jaehyun will smirk, lower his lips to the back of a finger covered in cake icing, and _suck_ , lashes fluttering. Taeyong can’t seem to stop touching the claim mark on his wrist, which he’s been leaving uncovered since the two of them officially popped the question. The official announcement isn’t set to go out until January 2027, but Johnny thinks it’s pretty obvious to everyone at this point. Like, there were fansites waiting for them when they arrived at the cake shop and everything.

He shoots a look at Mark, before settling back into his abandoned seat next to Taeyong, who glances at him quickly, before returning to molesting Jaehyun with his eyes. 

“My mom loves Taeyong,” Johnny says.

That gets him a smile and another look, as radiant as he’s been all day, and `#Taeyong_oppa_is_glowing` has been trending almost non-stop since about January 1.

“Okay.” Mark takes his own seat next to Jaehyun, and punches _him_ in the arm, catching him mid-lick. “Stop that. You’re in public.”

Jaehyun turns doleful, puppy dog eyes on Mark, a hand coming up so that he can drag a fingernail teasingly along his own claim bite.

His mother titters nervously.

Taeyong visibly stops breathing.

The poor caterer looks like she’d like to pull out a fan.

Mark thwacks Jaehyun’s hand away from his neck. “Stop that,” he says again. “You are in public _and_ nearly thirty.”

Jaehyun keeps pouting, clearly amused, but his ears give him away as at least a little embarrassed. Taeyong slides a hand into his, and gives it an obvious squeeze. 

“You’re just jealous I’m getting married,” Jaehyun tells Mark.

Mark rolls his eyes, then exchanges a look with Johnny, who does his goddamn best to somehow smile back. “Uh-huh,” Mark says. “Because when I get married, I absolutely want it to require like fourteen months of planning and more cakes than God himself intended.”

Jaehyun’s eyes crinkle. “But aren’t you American—”

“Canadian,” Mark corrects sharply, offended despite himself. “And shut up. You love how American your wedding is. When I get married, I’m not doing any of this.”

Jaehyun stares back at him, but Johnny notices he doesn’t argue. He knows Taeyong and Jaehyun originally picked a destination wedding for the privacy and weren’t going to do it that much differently than if they’d booked one of the wedding halls. But then Jaehyun’s mom threw a fit and Taeyong’s mom was disappointed because she’d supposedly “learned from his sisters” and wanted to “try again” and so they’d compromised, opting for a more drawn out, elaborate ceremony with less strangers in attendance. It had been one of the messier arguments between Jaehyun and his parents, and Johnny had been (if not to the extent Mark was) involved in Claimgate, as Donghyuck christened it on tour in Baltimore last year. Jaehyun hadn’t called home for an entire week. Taeyong kept getting talked about for looking sad on his way in and out of airports. More than a few well-intentioned fans scrounged up that one V LIVE from New Year’s, when articles came out that Jaehyun’s claim mark was fading, and he and Taeyong went live from inside a hotel closet, practically soft-core porn. A lot of things in that video probably keep their managers up at night, but the very telling pause Taeyong made after reading out the fan question, `Oppa, when are you going to get married?` is probably the worst offender. And Johnny was at one point actually afraid that Jaehyun was going to get NCT 127’s V LIVE account suspended for indecency, with the way he kept stroking the bite on his neck.

But they got their shit together eventually, so now Johnny is here, in a cake shop in Seoul, helping Jaehyun and Taeyong pick a wedding cake.

And Mark is here, because of course he is.

“Would you really do a Korean style wedding, Mark-yah?” Taeyong asks Mark suddenly, still holding Jaehyun’s hand.

Wherever Mark and Jaehyun’s argument had gone, it halts abruptly in its tracks, but Johnny missed most of it anyway so he’s not too bothered.

“Like…” Taeyong looks quickly at Johnny, for guidance, or something, and Johnny absolutely _cannot_. “In a wedding hall,” Taeyong finishes finally. “You wouldn’t… like you don’t want all the bells and whistles like…” He looks at Jaehyun this time, but Jaehyun’s gone back to communicating with his mother with only facial expressions. “Uh, the best man, or whatever?” Even after nearly ten years Taeyong’s English is adorable, and Jaehyun stops arguing with his mother and dimples at his fiancé instead. (Johnny’s stomach does another roll, but he’s already fled to the bathroom once, and he can’t go again so soon.) “You don’t want those things?” Taeyong says, that last bit somehow sounding both confused and long suffering.

The moment Taeyong finishes speaking, Mark starts to grin. “Why, do you want to be my best man, Taeyong-hyung?” he says. “Are you having second thoughts about not letting me be yours?”

Taeyong shoots Jaehyun another look, but this one is significantly more, please-come-collect-your-friend. “For the last time, Mark, you don’t need to be the… best man to give a speech at the reception,” he says, with careful consultation of his mother—who just smiles—and Jaehyun—who very kindly rolls his eyes. “But you’re not standing up during the ceremony,” Taeyong adds quickly. “Or giving me away.”

Mark colors. “The best man doesn’t give you away, Taeyongie-hyung,” he protests immediately, even though this may be the twentieth time they’ve had this conversation in literally four months. “The best man… like… there’s speeches. And like, being your go-to guy. The rings.”

Taeyong’s blinking owlishly at Mark, who really ought to stop talking, at this point, but can’t seem to.

“And they hook up with the maid of honor.”

Jaehyun finally clears his throat. “Yeah, we really won’t be needing one of those, but thanks for volunteering, Mark,” he says.

Mark glowers at him. “Obviously I’d be your best man, Jaehyun-hyung,” he says with dignity. And then, almost like he can’t help himself, adds, “Sorry, but he’s an only child,” to Jaehyun’s mother.

Jaehyun’s mother just smiles back at Mark, utterly charmed, but utterly clueless.

Johnny gets it.

That’s a lot of people’s approach to Mark Lee.

“Johnny-hyung would be Taeyong-hyung’s best man,” Mark is continuing, and Johnny feels his heart stutter.

“Uh, Mark,” he tries to say, thinking of literally _anything else_ —Stephanie, other people he could meet who might be his soulmate, NCT 127’s comeback, if he actually likes any of the frosting choices he’s tasted today— _anything at all_.

Jaehyun looks at him far too knowingly and even Taeyong looks concerned, but that might have more to do with the fact that Jaehyun’s finally let go of his hand.

“So obviously I’ll have to hook up with him, haha,” finishes Mark, and he even has the audacity to wink at Johnny.

Mark’s been doing this since Jaehyun and Taeyong reminded them they weren’t going to do a wedding party, but somehow it still opens a pit in Johnny’s stomach.

Mark rolls his eyes, oblivious as always. “And I’m still giving a speech,” he tells Jaehyun, then Jaehyun’s mom, who snorts as he slips into real panic, once he’s realized he’s spoken banmal and pointed a fork at her. “Sorry—”

“Mark, it’s fine,” says Jaehyun’s mother, charm winning out over confusion, and Johnny gets that too. “Now. Youngho-yah.”

Johnny stands to attention.

“We need you to be the tie breaker.”

“Yes.” Johnny claps his hands together, picks up his own discarded fork, and turns his full attention back to the cakes. “Nobody tell me which one is Jaehyunnie’s favorite versus Taeyongie’s favorite. I want to go in completely unbiased.”

He thinks he hears Mark tell Taeyong’s mother something about how this is why they of course had to ask Johnny for his opinion—“He’s got the most sense out of us all, sorry, Jaehyun-hyung.”—but he tunes it out. This is Jaehyun and Taeyong’s wedding cake. Whatever else Johnny may be dealing with right now, is something to lock away in the box with everything else. He takes a bite. 

Afterwards, Taeyong and Mark have individual schedules, and so Johnny ends up in a car with just Jaehyun and a manager. Jaehyun and Taeyong’s mothers left together after many hugs and well wishes, and there were more than a few squeals from the still-waiting fansites when as one, both members of the Lee family took a hold of one of Jaehyun’s very pinchable cheeks.

Mark laughed and played with his hair and looked stunning, as always, which.

Johnny’s fine.

Johnny’s… dealing.

“Chimaek?” says Jaehyun, for once not immediately plugged into his phone. He’s got his hair shoved out of his eyes and the thing in his hand anyway, but he’s giving Johnny his full attention instead of typing away to his fiancé.

Johnny blinks at him. “It’s like three p.m.,” he says.

Jaehyun just shrugs. “You look like you could use the beer.”

“Yes please,” Johnny says.

Jaehyun smirks, but only taps on his phone. “I’ll text Donghyuck,” he says. “Your floor. He can order it and it’ll be there when we get there.”

Johnny leans back in his seat and shuts his eyes. “Thanks, Jaehyunnie.”

“Anytime,” Jaehyun says. He pauses. “I—sorry, Johnny-hyung.”

Johnny makes a non-committal noise in the back of his throat and decides to try to take a nap for the drive home. “I really liked cake three,” he offers first.

Jaehyun’s silent for a moment. “Taeyongie did too,” he says quietly. “So did I.”

And, feeling like a complete asshole, Johnny manages a close-eyed smile. “Thank you for including me, Jaehyun-ah,” he says.

Jaehyun doesn’t respond, probably because he’s just looking at Johnny, but Johnny keeps his eyes shut for the rest of the drive.

* * *

Their beer and chicken beats them to the dorm, and there’s only a little in-fighting with Donghyuck, who takes one whiff of Johnny and scowls, ceding the takeaway containers. “Ugh, look, Johnny-hyung,” he says. “ _I’ll_ tell him. I’m literally his age. I understand him in ways the rest of you can’t. We are the _same generation_ —”

“We are too,” Jaehyun mumbles, but it’s with good humor and around a mouthful of chicken. Apparently the food offer was more than just him wanting to help Johnny feel better.

“—I’ll just sit on him,” Donghyuck continues. “I’ll sit on him, and then you can come in and confess your undying affection, or whatever, and he won’t be able to escape because _I’ll be sitting on him_ , and then you and Mark-hyung can be as sickening as Jaehyun-hyung and Taeyong-hyung.”

Like a scripted drama, Donghyuck shoots Jaehyun an ugly look; Jaehyun raises his chopsticks in the air and points fondly towards Taeyong’s room; “I love you so much, Taeyongie-hyung. You may not be in the dorm, but I feel your presence like a totally-non-creepy ghost—like the movie, only less pottery, more alpha-alpha sex—”; and Donghyuck looks like he’s seriously considering moving out of the dorm to live literally _anywhere else_.

Johnny picks up his own set of chopsticks off the table with a sigh, grabbing the takeaway bag in the other. “That’s nice of you to offer, Donghyuckie, but no thank you,” he says.

Donghyuck shoots Johnny a disdainful look, but doesn’t say of any of the less-nice things he’s said when drunk, or when Johnny was drunk, or back when Mark had a girlfriend and was doing things like learning how to cook and feeding them all (mostly Johnny) for practice. “I can’t stay here,” he addresses the room. “I cannot be witness to this level of self-pity.”

“Ooh, self-pity, nice one,” Jaehyun says, pointing at Donghyuck around another mouthful of chicken, and nudging one of the bottles of beer towards Johnny.

Johnny takes it gratefully, picks up one of the spoons Donghyuck’s helpfully left on the table for them, and pops the cap open. Then he thinks about Mark on _Life Bar_ all those years ago, because he’s sad and drinking at three p.m. on a Thursday, and sighs.

Donghyuck pivots and goes, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. Johnny hears the words, “very sad,” and “Mark-hyung,” and “not even really all that tall or anything,” and decides not to comment. Instead he raises the bottle to his lips and takes a long, depressing sip.

Jaehyun lets this go on for the length of time it takes him to finish his chicken, and then he shifts back in his seat on the couch, eyeing Johnny with an all-too-knowing gaze. “So,” he says.

Johnny picks up a piece of chicken, plops it in his mouth, and chews. “So,” he parrots back, swallowing. He picks up his beer, throws back a mouthful, and makes eye contact that he hopes seems confident.

Jaehyun’s expression somehow goes even more shrewd. “So, are we going to talk about it?” he says. “You and Mark, I mean.”

Johnny swallows with an involuntary little noise and simultaneously shoots Jaehyun a betrayed look. His friend stares back innocently with an eyebrow raised, but Johnny feels justified, and cuts him absolutely no slack. It’s been an unspoken rule since they came up with the box metaphor to begin with that there would never be any mention of names, and sure, Jaehyun blew the lid off his own metaphorical packaging within two years, and yeah, there was that particularly sobering meal they shared in celebration of _Neo Zone_ ’s announcement and the New Year where Johnny really let it all hang out, but that was because Taeyong wasn’t a complete idiot and Mark and Johnny _fucking slept together_ , so. Those were both extenuating circumstances.

Since then, Jaehyun’s abided by their rule to a tee, only really breaking it when they were letting everyone else in 127 in on the secret, Taeyong in the background shouting gleefully about said metaphorical boxes (“Sorry, Johnny-hyung, but I think you said something to him and he’s not an idiot, surprisingly?” “Hey!”) and Doyoung just shaking his head because he knew all along that absolutely nobody in NCT 127 had good taste.

Only occasionally does Jaehyun mention his not-literal-soulmate by name.

Johnny feels _betrayed_. He sat through two hours of cake tasting for Jaehyun’s _wedding_.

“No?” asks Jaehyun.

“I asked Stephanie to go to the wedding with me,” says Johnny, instead. He pokes miserably at the chicken in the takeaway container.

Jaehyun looks at him impassively for a long moment, then picks up his own beer. “Stephanie,” he says, with little-to-no accent. “That’s that girl you were seeing last year in Chicago.” During the tour where a bunch of them stripped off and started to show their abs, he doesn’t add, and Johnny loves him for it. Because Jaehyun and Johnny did it, of course, but so did Mark—so did Taeyong—because they were often hanging out with the rest of the SuperM hyungs, and confidence breeds confidence.

Mark Lee was twenty-six in 2025 and confident enough to take his top off for the entire world, and Johnny… Johnny had hoped, stupidly, around the time of the end of year programs, when Jaehyun and Taeyong were getting engaged, when it was getting to be the anniversary of that time Mark and Johnny slept together, when he was coming up on thirty-two, the end of his supposedly lucky year, that maybe…

Well.

Johnny sighs. “Yeah,” he says.

Jaehyun takes a sip of beer, swirls it around his mouth, then puffs out his cheeks. He swallows. He gasps. “I thought you broke up with her,” he says.

Johnny looks down at his uneaten chicken and sets down his chopsticks. “Yeah, well,” he says. “He kept making jokes about us hooking up at your wedding.”

There’s a beat.

Jaehyun reaches over and snags some of Johnny’s abandoned chicken, and Johnny pushes the container in his direction, deciding he’d much rather drown his sorrows in shitty beer.

“I know he’s just… I mean I started it.” Johnny winces, shrugs, slides both hands up and down the neck of the beer bottle. He had started it, was the thing. He was the one who mentioned it, when Jaehyun was busy blinking between them all going, “What’s a best man? I’m sorry?” and Taeyong was trying desperately to keep Donghyuck from posting shit on Instagram. Yuta kept dramatically going on about how “Oppa was _betrayed_ ,” and Taeil kept cackling and texting too quickly for anyone to follow, and between it all, Mark turned very earnestly to Jaehyun and said, “It’s like your brother, Hyung. They do your bachelor party and help the guests find their seats and help the wedding go really smoothly.”

“But doesn’t the wedding hall do all that?” said Doyoung, while Yuta’s dramatics kicked up a notch until Jaehyun had to actually kick him.

“Hyung?” Mark had said, looking beseechingly at Johnny for guidance, as the only other North American.

“They also sleep with the maid of honor,” added Johnny, because he didn’t love himself, apparently. He was too busy trying to figure out how he was going to survive Taeyong’s full attention, once he stopped doing battle with Donghyuck. How he was going to handle seeing Taeyong’s claim mark every time they were at the airport in addition to Jaehyun’s now, since he was done with the bracelets and long sleeves and whatever else their stylists managed to scrounge up for him in the name of privacy. There would be no engagement rings, because they had a tour and an album and Doyoung to welcome back, but nobody could stop Taeyong from having Jaehyun’s bite on his wrist; nobody could stop Taeyong from letting the entire world see Jaehyun’s bite on his wrist; nobody could stop Taeyong from being proud and in love and… loud.

Mark had looked at Johnny for guidance and Johnny had smiled back and made the only joke he could think of, so that Mark would laugh, and his eyes would crinkle, and he’d maybe slap the table a bit.

He hadn’t thought it would last, that they’d still be talking about it every time Jaehyun got frustrated and had it out with Mark _once again_ about how they didn’t do bridal parties in Korea and Mark was being that weird Canadian friend again, and embarrassing him in front of his mother.

It’s been barely _three months_ , most of which has been spent dealing with the stress of album prep and welcoming Doyoung back from active duty. Johnny thinks it’s a wonder he lasted this long, waited only until they were picking a wedding cake to try desperately to get a date to the wedding that wasn’t going to jokingly be Mark Lee.

Jaehyun pokes Johnny in the arm with the cold lip of his beer. “Yah, Hyung,” he says. “Just because you made the joke first doesn’t mean he should get to go around rubbing salt in the wound.”

Johnny feels himself bristle. “Well it’s not like he knows,” he starts to say, as always, and this time Jaehyun just rolls his eyes and throws back more beer.

“Yes, well, if you’d just _tell him_ he was salting your open wounds instead of letting him do it because he’s an idiot,” he says, not at all kindly. “Then maybe he could put a band aid on instead. Kiss it better. Put us all out of our misery. Put you out of your misery,” he adds, with a sharp, probing look. He licks his lips. “Instead of letting him think it’s not a big deal that he _slept with you_ —”

“That wasn’t a big deal,” says Johnny, feeling a stress headache start in his temples on top of the one caused by the general misery of a long day spent around two people very happily in love. “And I only told you that because I needed to tell _someone_ and you’re my—”

“Box buddy, I got you,” Jaehyun says, tapping his beer bottle against Johnny’s. “But you’ve been terrible at keeping that shit in there. You must take it out to stare at it every other day.”

Johnny glares. “I have not,” he says. “I do not. We were the de facto leaders of NCT 127 when you and Taeyongie were gone and I handled it. You just weren’t around for most of it—”

“Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry.” Jaehyun sighs, sets down his beer, and pushes the chicken back towards Johnny. “Eat. You didn’t have lunch. My wedding cake doesn’t count.” And then he colors, like he always does when he mentions said wedding in casual speech without really thinking about it. Immediately he goes shy, and pleased, and more than a little guilty; only because Johnny’s around.

Johnny feels like an awful friend on top of everything else. He puts a piece of chicken in his mouth and chews morosely.

Jaehyun pokes him with the beer again. “Yah, Hyung,” he says. “Stop that. It’s fine. You’re fine. I—I’m sorry.” He looks it, sounds it, leans in so he can hug Johnny, so quickly Johnny thinks he’s imagined it. “It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. Stephanie’s the one with the long hair, yeah? She’s really pretty. But she’s an alpha, right? Your mom would approve?”

Johnny has to blink a few times to try to understand the deluge of sentences. “My mom would just be glad I’ve had a relationship that lasted longer than three months,” he says dryly.

Jaehyun snorts. “But you broke up before we even left Chicago,” he says.

Johnny manages a grin. “It doesn’t matter to my Mom. I brought her home to meet them. We had dinner. You should know that that’s as good as a _proposal_.”

Jaehyun’s lips quirk a little, but he doesn’t say anything about the events leading up to Claimgate and his own proposal troubles, and Johnny loves him, really.

“True.” Jaehyun clinks their bottles again. “But how are you going to match your suit to her outfit if she’s in Chicago?”

Johnny points at him with his mouth opened wide. “You’re right,” he says. “We’ll have to do a JCC—we’ll just say it’s a general black-tie thing, not for your wedding.”

Jaehyun rolls his eyes. “They know ‘#Taeyong_oppa_is_glowing’ trends like every time we go to the airport, right? And the short sleeves in March are not helping.”

“Well, Doyoungie did come home only a month ago,” points out Johnny helpfully, even though he agrees. “And we really do need to have a full comeback. And tour. And some people might not buy tickets if they knew they wouldn’t be able to steal you from Taeyongie.”

“I think the people who survived 2024 would be fine with it, honestly,” Jaehyun says dryly, but grins at his own expense, anyway.

Johnny feels warm, like he always does when he sees how far Jaehyun and Taeyong have come since the morning they became Dispatch’s New Year Couple of 2024.

“And—” Jaehyun breaks off, ears burning, and blushes across both cheeks.

Johnny laughs. “Finally starting to regret rut week?” he says, thinking about how Donghyuck actually went and booked Jaehyun and Taeyong a suite at a heat-hotel, about how Ten still won’t tell Johnny some of went down, and how Nari-noona threatened to quit a total of ten times over the whole three days. That was around the time Jaehyun and Taeyong had seriously started to consider moving out of the dorms, a process semi-halted by the fact that they’re not telling anyone about their wedding until literally the month before it happens, but also something Johnny knows Taeyong still feels horribly guilty about and Jaehyun is approaching with his usual straightforwardness.

“No.” Jaehyun’s ears are like bright red lie detectors and Johnny smirks.

He shoots Jaehyun another grin. “What’s your color pallet again?” he says. “I need it so Stephanie and I can match. We’ve got to look good.”

Jaehyun sprawls back against the couch with a groan. “Please don’t remind me,” he says. “I had no idea there were that many colors for tablecloths, and I’m a member of NCT.” When Johnny tilts his head, he adds, “We change our hair so often that people often make videos about us all going bald.”

Johnny snickers. “Ah, right.”

Jaehyun rolls his eyes, then shoulders into Johnny’s side, knocking their arms together so that they’re pressed together on the couch, warm comfort after a long, hard day. “But you’re really okay, yeah?” he says. “Box well and truly sealed?”

Johnny throws back more beer and manages somehow to smile. “Yeah,” he says. “Full on duct taped.”

* * *

Jaehyun and Taeyong’s bachelor party is entirely covered in dicks. It’s the first thing Johnny notices, and he wonders if he could just un-notice. They’re having it at the NCT 127 Dorm, because it’s easier than booking a room somewhere, or doing it at SM. But everyone from NCT has piled into said dorm, and it’s cramped and rapidly becoming hot. Johnny was tasked with corralling Jaehyun and Taeyong upstairs on the top floor while Mark got everything ready, and while technically he was involved in the planning, really, Johnny’s done nothing since the first planning meeting.

That day, Mark was all freshly showered and extra touchy and Johnny decided it was safer if he just pretended to have other things to do, like texting Stephanie about their outfits, or trying to date other people. He’d weighed in on venue—“we should definitely just do it at our dorm”—and guest list—“well, everyone in the band I guess?”—but that was about it; he certainly wasn’t involved in the dick decorating.

“Mark,” Jaehyun says, upon entering the dorm. He’s got his eyes fixed on the most glaring of the party favors, namely, the two necklaces made almost entirely of dicks, which Donghyuck and YangYang are proudly parading over to Jaehyun and Taeyong. “What—” Jaehyun sounds like he doesn’t even know how to finish that sentence.

Donghyuck drapes the necklace around Jaehyun’s neck with a final cackle; YangYang practically sparkles at Taeyong, who Johnny thinks might actually be speechless. Chenle bestows them with the finishing touches, two crowns, made up entirely of what are definitely alpha cocks, given the knots. They make the two of them sort of resemble very phallic unicorns, and Johnny thinks Jaehyun has been stunned into silence as well. “What?” is all he manages.

If Johnny were brave enough to further examine the décor, he thinks he’d see the full variety of dicks on every available surface and then some—beta, alpha, omega, and all. He’s pretty sure there are dick shot glasses. There are dick tablecloths. In the corner, tragically hidden behind their thankfully _closed blinds_ , sits what looks like a giant dick plushie. Or possibly a chair. The knot bit sort of is large enough that Johnny thinks a person could sit on it. If they… wanted. Johnny has no words.

“What?” Jaehyun says again. “Mark—what?”

“What?” Mark’s standing in the center of the doorway like the proper host he is, staring between the three of them with a wide smile. After a pause, he shifts so that he can glare at Johnny out of the corner of his eye. “It’s traditional.”

“Traditional,” Jaehyun repeats back, turning his gaze around the room critically. He too seems to get stuck on the stuffed dick… chair… teddy bear… teddy… dick?

“Yeah.” Mark shoots Johnny a look and says out of the corner of his mouth in fast, hard-to-follow English, “You fucking ditched me; I made such a fuss about this thing; turns out, America mostly has _bachelorette party_ traditions, not _bachelor party_ traditions; you fucking _owe me_ —” Then he smiles, wide and innocent. “Traditional.”

Johnny clears his throat. “Yeah, um.” There’s only a slight hitch when he speaks, catching the attention of pretty much the entire room. “American bachelor parties traditionally have a lot of, uh, penises,” he says, staring at the giant inflatable banana in the center of the dorm, not sure what it’s for, but definitely sure he doesn’t want to ask. “And uh”—His eyes light upon the banner spanning the length of the living room, loudly proclaiming, “Congratulations on Tying the Knots” in English, with a very clearly handwritten addition of the final “s.”—“Puns,” Johnny finishes, somehow. “Americans really like… puns. That’s—that’s clever—‘congratulations on tying the knots’”—he translates the sentence into Korean, watches Taeyong’s eyes widen; watches Jaehyun’s eyes briefly turn heavenwards as he has his translation confirmed—“because you both have… knots… Did you get that, uh, custom?” Johnny turns what is probably a very terrifying smile on Mark.

Mark stares back, utterly useless.

“Taeilie-hyung and I bought the decorations,” Donghyuck offers, like he’s actually proud to admit to such a thing.

“Oh, cool,” Johnny says. “I mean I knew that. I mean, uh, congratulations on… tying your… knots.”

There is complete and utter silence from the rest of the room.

Finally, Doyoung says, like a peace offering, “Americans really do like puns?” and the ice, it seems, is broken. YangYang moves off to show Kun what appear to be dick shaped straws, Ten and Lucas seem to be playing Rock Papers Scissors to decide who has to deal with the inflatable banana first—Johnny realizes, when Chenle picks up the set of rings, that it is a _ring toss_ —, and Taeil moves to set up music. The first song on the approved bachelor party playlist, it seems, is “Whiplash.”

Johnny didn’t know what he expected. “Wow,” he says, turning to the lovebirds, but they only have eyes for each other.

“Americans really do like puns,” Taeyong tells Jaehyun, reaching out to fuss with the few strands of his hair that have been mussed by his penis crown. “You have a—” Before he can touch Jaehyun’s hair, Jaehyun is reaching up to take him by the hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it, and then dragging his mouth to rest along the imprint of his own teeth.

“You look surprisingly hot wearing a dick crown, Taeyongie-hyung,” he says. “I wonder what you’d like in _only_ a dick crown.”

Taeyong barks out startled, honest laughter in response, clearly unable to do anything else. “You too, Jaehyunnie,” he says.

Johnny looks very abruptly away and focuses instead on Mark, who’s looking like a considerable amount of weight has left his shoulders.

“Thanks,” Mark says, steering the both of them away from the horrible amount of flirting from the men of the hour. “Really, thank you.”

Johnny dips his head. “How much was all of this?” he can’t help but ask, eyes flicking around the room one more time.

Mark winces.

“Who _paid_ for all of this?” Johnny continues, reaching out to tentatively finger one of the hanging dicks, and then thinking better of it. “How did Donghyuckie get it into our dorm?”

Mark shrugs. “No comment,” he says. Which is how Johnny finds out that technically _he paid for all of the dicks_ , and forcing Donghyuck to continuously pour him shots into one of the dick shot glasses for the rest of the night is really the bare minimum 127’s maknae can do to make it up to him.

“Right,” Mark says, once Johnny has finished two shots but hasn’t actually attempted to strangle Donghyuck because Taeil was an accomplice and is standing guard over him with absolutely zero fear. Taeil’s always been fearless, but now Taeil has served two years of active duty and could probably kill Johnny without even blinking. “So, uh, if everyone could, um, help bring the gifts over…”

Johnny lowers his shot glass, noticing for the first time that there is a great big table filled with modestly wrapped presents over by their drying rack.

“And, uh, Jaehyun-hyung. Taeyong-hyung.” Mark gestures to the couch. “If you could just sit there.” He looks… Well, he looks like he decided to throw an American-style bachelorette party for his two Korean best friends, and now all his closest friends are taking shots of alcohol out of dick shot glasses and sipping cocktails using dick-shaped straws. “Right,” Mark says again. “Right, so.” He looks at Johnny, like Johnny is in any way equipped to be helping him, let alone aware of what the fuck they’re even doing. “Everyone should have brought some, uh, _lingerie_ , for Jaehyun-hyung and Taeyong-hyung.”

There is another long, unfortunate pause.

“I’m sorry,” says Jaehyun faintly. “Everyone should have brought Taeyongie and I some _what_?”

“Underwear,” Mark tries valiantly. “Uh—panties.”

Jaehyun’s mouth has fallen open, and Taeyong is looking between Mark, his soon-to-be-husband, and Johnny, like any one of them are going to help.

“Youhavetoguesswhoboughteachone,” Mark says, in a great rush. “It’s uh, a thing. Tradition. A tradition.” He looks at Johnny, and smiles.

Johnny gestures for Donghyuck to get him another shot. “Sure,” he says. “Good old U.S. of A. Underwear guessing games.” He downs the alcohol, which burns, and the little surprise cock at the bottom of his glass pops out to say hello to Johnny’s eyeballs as he stares down into it like it holds the answers to all his questions. In a way, it does, because Johnny is only here because of dicks. Mark Lee’s dick, probably. Which wasn’t all that great, anyway, and Johnny’s been with loads better people—been fucked by loads better people—in the seven years since then. Being hung up on Mark Lee’s dick is _stupid_.

He sighs, then turns his attention back to the bachelor party. 

Jaehyun exchanges a look with Taeyong. “Well?” he says, lips quirking despite himself. He still looks shocked, but less so, like he’s finally starting to warm to the entire dick-filled celebration. “It could be fun.”

Taeyong is staring back at him with literal hearts in his eyes. “What does the winner get?”

“Oh, we’re keeping score?” Johnny hears Doyoung mutter, but when he looks at him, all Doyoung does is smile.

Ten and Lucas have gathered up most of the bags, Lucas because his hands are literally _huge_ , and Ten so he can peek into all the bags and giggle.

Jaehyun’s waggling his eyebrows, mischief making his dimples pop.

Donghyuck groans and leans in close to whisper badly in Jaemin’s ear. “He’s about to say something _awful_.”

“Winner gets to decide who tops?” Jaehyun says, and actually pauses for the chorus of groans.

“Deal,” Taeyong replies, and they fucking shake on it.

Around the third thong (Yuta, Ten, and fucking _Chenle_ ) and what looks like a full _Sailor Moon_ costume (Doyoung, horrifyingly enough), Johnny decides that not only is he not drunk enough for the entire situation, but the entire party is not drunk enough.

“We should play—drinking games,” he says, louder than he’d intended, pausing when everyone stops debating if it counts if Jaehyun totally only figured out the “robe that you answer the door in when the police come by to question you about the murder of your rich husband, Lee Taeyong,” was a joint gift from WinWin and the rest of WayV by way of weird “97line wizardry,” according to said rich husband, Lee Taeyong. “Truth or Dare.”

“Truth or Dare’s not a drinking game?” Doyoung mutters.

“Never Have I Ever.”

That gets him some rapt attention.

“Beer Pong,” Johnny adds, desperately.

Jungwoo raises his hand. “I’m amazing at Beer Pong,” he says.

Johnny points at him. “Exactly,” he says. “And it’s easy—it’ll be like a warm-up.”

“I have just the thing,” says Donghyuck, and goes to retrieve a set of ping pong balls.

“Oh, thank God,” Johnny says, as Donghyuck unwraps those. “Those are normal—they’re not—”

“They’re balls,” Donghyuck says, and makes terrible, terrible eye contact the entire time. “Are we playing in teams?”

“No, tournament style,” says Jaehyun, and then, with an appraising look at his lightweight soon-to-be husband. “We’ll play all of you.”

“Yeah,” Taeyong says. “Wait, we’ll what?”

Which is probably why the first round of Never Have I Ever ends up being Jaehyun, flushed and practically listing into Taeyong’s lap, lowering a finger and saying, “Never Have I Ever been knotted, and dildos totally don’t count,” to a chorus of groans and shouts—Taeyong, valiantly propping him up, saying, “Yah, Jaehyun-ah, you’re not supposed to have done the thing—” 

It only gets worse from there.

Johnny wakes up the morning after in a bed filled with more members that it really should hold, since there was only so much chaperoning he and Mark were in a state to do, and Jaehyun and Taeyong got Taeyong’s room to themselves because it was their bachelor party. His entire mouth feels like something died in it. Mark Lee is lying curled around him, still fast asleep.

“Mark,” Johnny rasps into Mark’s hair, trying not to think too hard about how closely intertwined they are, how one of Mark’s hands is resting on Johnny’s bare waist, his shirt rucked up from drunken sleep. “If we have a schedule today, I may kill you.”

Mark groans, but otherwise doesn’t stir.

Johnny tries to remember who else is in the room with them—Donghyuck, Taeil, and maybe Chenle, he thinks, but they’re piled into the bed and on the floor. There’s no one else behind him, certainly. He thinks most of them went upstairs with WayV, since Jaehyun’s bed was clearly going to be empty, and no one really wanted to be on the same floor as the love birds; justifiable, because Taeyong’s expectedly loud and Jaehyun is quieter, but expectedly shameless— Why Mark is down here is beyond Johnny at this point, but he just can’t think about it.

“Mark,” he says again.

Mark grunts. “Mm,” he says. “We don’t have a schedule. I made sure.”

Johnny mulls that over and decides to go back to sleep. “Awesome,” he says. “You’re a good best man, Mark Lee.” Tragically, he can fucking feel Mark’s grin against his neck.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Johnny Suh,” he says into the skin there.

Johnny shivers, and not just because Mark’s breath is warm. Not just because Mark’s lips are cool. “That’s me,” he says. “Best man material.”

That gets him another grin, and then a yawn. “I’m lucky you’re my date to the wedding,” Mark mumbles, clearly almost back to sleep.

“Uh, yeah,” Johnny says, after a few awful seconds of silence. “Actually—I have a date—”

But Mark’s clearly gone back to sleep and is already snoring quietly right next to Johnny’s ear, so Johnny just sort of lies there, not moving but not sleeping, for a long, long time.

Later, when he’s finished seeing Mark and the rest of the stragglers out of their dorm, Jaehyun comes out of Taeyong’s room in sweatpants and one of Taeyong’s t-shirts, yawning and shoving a hand through his unruly hair. He joins Johnny at the kitchen counter, helps himself to the pot of coffee Mark put on before leaving, and yawns some more.

“So, are you just sort of pretending the box doesn’t have a lid, or?” he says, gazing at Johnny lazily with one eye. He’s fucking petting his claim mark, completely and totally without thinking about it.

Johnny feels something inside him snap like a rubber band finally stretched too far. “The only reason I’m not punching you in the face right now is because you’re getting married in two months,” he snaps, and goes to drink his coffee in his room.

* * *

Stephanie lands two days before the wedding, looking harried, no less pretty than when Johnny saw her last, and carrying a garment bag. Johnny meets her at the airport feeling more than a little stressed, and he doesn’t actually have to do much of anything at the wedding beyond give a speech because he and Mark said they would.

“Hi,” she says in English when she sees him, and stares up at him from under dark lashes, yawning. “You’re just as tall as I remembered.”

She’s as tall as he remembered, and just as unreadable to his near scent-blind nose, but more than a few guys in the airport are giving her a onceover. “Uh, you too,” Johnny says. Should he hug her? Kiss her on the cheek? Take the garment bag? He should definitely take the garment bag. He takes the garment bag.

On his phone, Mark is pestering him non-stop in KakaoTalk, clearly not having believed him when Johnny replied to his text that morning like, `uh, actually, I can’t go sightseeing around Penang with you today. I’ve got a thing at the airport.`

Johnny sighs, and rearranges his hold on Stephanie’s bag so he can text him back. `Look, Mark, I’m picking up my girlfriend at the airport. I’ll see you later tonight and tomorrow AT THE WEDDING.`

Thank God for English and capitalization; what would Johnny do without it? 

Mark abruptly cuts off, clearly having read the message—the number next to it is a clear sign—but Johnny is just… Johnny doesn’t care anymore. He screencaps the conversation and sends it into his private chat with Ten, who’s standing in for Jaehyun on the emotional front because he’s _Ten_ , and because Jaehyun’s getting married (and turning thirty) in less than forty-eight hours.

“Hi,” he tells Stephanie, and he does kiss her on the cheek.

She lets him, eyes narrowed, before pointedly stepping back. “Johnny,” she says. “We broke up.”

Johnny looks down at her, and smiles. He’s been told it’s one of his best features, and that it inspires true joy. “I was a different man when we broke up?” he tries.

Stephanie raises one eyebrow. “Which member is it?” she says, and starts walking, rolling her suitcase pointedly in between them so Johnny can’t step too close.

He sighs, dropping the act, and leads her back towards the car, towards his manager, and the few straggler-fansites who are still trying to follow him back to Jaehyun and Taeyong’s _wedding_ like it’s not the worst invasion of privacy. Johnny makes a note.

“Hyung, can we tweet about it again? Mark and I can go live?” he tells Byoungjun-hyung, when they reach the van. The rest of NCT are all still interspersed throughout East Asia, and Johnny and Mark are only already present because they were the witnesses when Jaehyun and Taeyong were getting registered to be married, and are now mostly just serving as moral support in the days leading up to the big event. Technically speaking NCT 127 gave an official statement asking for privacy when they announced the engagement and ceremony to begin with, but Johnny can clearly see that it would not hurt to reiterate. He’d even sit alone on some hotel bed with Mark to do it.

Byoungjun-hyung nods, eyes fixed on a particularly brave camera lens. “Ah—hello.” Byoungjun-hyung bows, English coming out belatedly when he sees Stephanie.

She smiles back at him, her teeth very brilliant, and switches languages with only a mild pause. “Youngho-oppa.”

Johnny winces.

“Which member?”

They get in the car. They shut the door. Johnny looks down at his silent, but somehow still judgmental phone. “Mark,” he says finally. “It’s—it’s Mark.”

Ten has sent him a selfie of what looks like all of WayV at Pudong Airport, flying back to Seoul before they head to Malaysia for the wedding. `Fighting, Johnny-hyung`, he’s said in English. `You got this.`

Johnny rolls his head back in his seat and stares hard up at the ceiling of the car. It’s been so long since he’s said that out loud. It’s been so long since he let himself think about it, let the reality of that statement really take root, only to end up wrapped back up in metaphors and hidden from the world. Johnny doesn’t have a box anymore. Johnny has an empty shelf with the clear imprint of a box, dust piled in a thin line around that empty space neatly in a square.

“It’s—it’s Mark,” Johnny says again. “Fuck. It’s _Mark_ —” He stops, biting down hard on his tongue, somehow managing not to break skin, to taste blood. “Thank you for coming,” he tells his hands, his thighs, the divot between his collar bones. “It’s really saving my life.” He rallies a smile—good practice for the next forty-eight hours—and looks up at Stephanie. “Seriously,” he tells her, earnestly, sincerely, _Mark-Lee_ -ly. Johnny feels his expression shutter, feels his heart stutter, lets all the air out of his lungs and does his best to somehow keep smiling. “I owe you,” he says.

Stephanie stares back at him for a long moment, before reaching over to interlace their hands. She takes Johnny’s phone in the process and goes to set it face down in the seat between them. It lights up with more messages from Ten before she can do so, and Johnny winces. 

“Is that him, texting you?” asks Stephanie.

“No,” Johnny says, which isn’t a lie, but comes out badly anyway.

Stephanie tightens her grip on his hand. “Youngho-oppa.”

There is no wince this time, but Johnny stutters regardless. “It’s not like I’m—it’s not usually this bad—it’s not like I’ve been like this for all seven years—” He stops, feeling naked and exposed.

Stephanie is staring blankly at him, repeating the words, “seven years,” back under her breath like she can’t quite believe it.

“Jaehyunnie’s his best friend,” Johnny says finally, not sure how he’s managing. “And I am too, obviously, but they—they’re—they _click_ , differently.” His sentences sound as painful as they feel, coming out, but Johnny can’t find it in him to stop now that he’s started. “They’re both— _alphas_ —” The word slices free of Johnny’s throat with an ugly sound and he stops talking, decides there’s no way to talk about how he feels about Mark and Jaehyun. Jaehyun’s so happy and infectiously so, and Mark’s no longer the butt of everyone’s jokes, willing to give it back just as good, and Johnny feels trapped in the middle more often than not. “He’s just—he’s just been _insufferable_ ,” he finishes. “And Taeyongie—” Johnny shuts his eyes. “Mark loves Taeyongie.” Johnny breathes through his nose. “He keeps joking that we’re their unofficial North American best men,” Johnny says finally, in a whisper. “I—could not show up stag, to this wedding.” He swallows. “Thank you.”

He opens his eyes. When he looks, Stephanie is regarding him with a surprisingly little amount of pity. But when she sees him looking, she tightens her grip on his hand. Then she tugs it closer, pulling so that their shoulders line up, and Johnny’s phone nearly goes off the seat. He keeps staring at her, taking in the quirk of her lips, the lack of makeup because she was on a plane, the earthy, faint—because Johnny is a failure—scent that lingers around her, broadcasting her designation. His muscles relax. He starts to smile.

Stephanie abruptly stiffens, releasing his hand and narrowing both her eyes. “This doesn’t mean we’re dating,” she says.

Johnny opens his mouth to protest, only a little bit for show.

“This just means we’re going to act our asses off until Mark Lee freaking regrets the day he ever let you down easy.” She takes his hand again, her piece said. 

Johnny blinks. “He never let me down easy.”

Stephanie pauses. “The day he refused to acknowledge your feelings?” she tries.

Johnny tries to tug his hand free. “Fighting,” he says. “Yay. I’m glad we got that settled—”

“Youngho-oppa. Johnny-oppa. Johnny Suh,” says Stephanie. “Have you even told him?”

Johnny’s starting to worry about circulation in his hand, her grip is so tight. “Look, it’s not like I haven’t made overtures—”

“Oh, you’ve made overtures,” Stephanie repeats back, sarcasm dripping off every word.

“I’ve—I’ve kissed him,” says Johnny, feeling like he’s betrayed Mark’s confidence, but unable to keep it in. “We’ve—we’ve had sex—”

“You’ve _had sex_ ,” repeats Stephanie, hold on Johnny’s hand bordering on painful. “And he doesn’t know you’re in love with him?”

It’s Jaehyun all over again, and Johnny looks frantically around the car for anything else to focus on. “Hyung,” he says, latching onto Byoungjun-hyung in the driver’s seat. “Our hotel is, like, not that far from the airport. What are you doing? Are you lost?”

“The traffic is really bad, Youngho-yah. Sorry,” Byoungjun-hyung says immediately, eyes fixed on the car in front of them. “Ten minutes.”

“Ten—we’re staying like five minutes from the airport—”

“Fifteen minutes,” Byoungjun-hyung corrects.

Johnny glowers. “I should fire you,” he mutters.

His manager’s smirk is visible in the rearview mirror.

“Yah.” Stephanie gives Johnny’s hand a shake. “Why doesn’t Mark know you’re in love with him?”

Johnny winces. “Look, can you not say it like that—”

“Are you not in love with him?”

“Well, I am, but—”

“Get over it.” Stephanie shakes his hand again, this time moving his whole arm. “Why doesn’t he know?”

Johnny doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t even know how to begin to explain December 2019. He hasn’t told anyone about December 2019 except Jaehyun—he only told Jaehyun, because he couldn’t _not_ tell Jaehyun. Not after December 2023, February through May 2024, the whispers in the dark and the letters that only Johnny received for the entirety of Jaehyun’s first few months of enlistment. Jaehyun was so afraid of everything, talked a big game and had big plans but put pen to paper and wrote about how he was so afraid that the part of him that wanted Taeyong-hyung was _wrong_ and _bad_ and couldn’t possibly be God’s plan, or whatever.

Of course Johnny told Jaehyun.

He doesn’t know how to tell Stephanie.

“Look, does it matter?” he says finally. “It was almost—it was basically seven years ago, Stephanie, and it wasn’t that big of a deal—”

“Baby,” Stephanie interrupts, then tilts her head. “Or darling? Sweetheart?”

Johnny stares at her. “What?”

“We’re dating,” Stephanie says in explanation. “You can’t call me ‘Stephanie.’”

Johnny blinks. “I can’t?”

Stephanie is looking at him like Johnny imagines she might examine dirt under her nails. “No, you can’t, Jagi-yah,” she says in a hybrid of Korean and English. “Not if you want to make Mark question all his life choices—namely, sleeping with you and for some reason not dating you?” She finally releases her grip on Johnny’s hand and picks up his phone.

“You haven’t slept with me,” Johnny manages, not even sure where it is safest to begin. “Maybe I’m just really bad in bed, and… that’s why.”

Stephanie drags her eyes up and down Johnny’s torso two times. “Yeah, no,” she says, gesturing.

Johnny colors, ducking his head. “I—” he says. “I don’t want to make Mark question his life choices?”

Stephanie gapes at him. “Johnny,” she says.

“I don’t want to upset him,” Johnny says quickly. “Byoungjun-hyung, you’re literally circling the block. Be more obvious, I dare you,” he interjects, looking out the window. “I just didn’t want to show up single to Taeyongie and Jaehyunnie’s wedding, okay? It’s not—more than that.”

“Uh-huh,” Stephanie says. She shoves Johnny’s phone in his face, and unfortunately, it unlocks immediately because of that. Stephanie pulls up Ten’s latest message: more selfies at the airport, and the accompanying text, `Please tell me you’ve gone radio silent because you’ve finally decided to actually try to date Stephanie, instead of just using her to get back at Mark.`

Johnny stares at the message until his head starts to hurt.

Stephanie gives the phone a shake. “Well?”

Byoungjun-hyung finally pulls the car into the hotel garage, narrowly avoiding the curb. Johnny stares at _Stephanie_ until his head starts to hurt.

“We’re here,” Byoungjun-hyung says helpfully. “Anytime you want to get out of the car is fine.” He unbuckles himself and opens his own door, slamming it loudly once he’s exited.

Johnny keeps staring.

“Ugh, never mind.” Stephanie drops the phone into Johnny’s lap. “Does this hotel have a pool? I deserve a pool.”

“Uh, yeah,” Johnny says, locking his phone and not thinking about his now-silent conversation with Mark. “But we—this isn’t where the wedding is. We’re going there later today. I think some of Jaehyun’s relatives are already there, like, his mom and dad, obviously—”

Stephanie has clearly pulled up the resort website on her own phone and is scrolling through the amenities. “Ooh, a beach and the garden,” she says. “And it holds like three-hundred—I’d assume you bought it out?”

Johnny manages to click his mouth shut. “Well, not me personally. Taeyongie did—and it’s not a wealth thing, they do actually need all three hundred—Korean weddings are really big, Steph, and Jaehyunnie has a lot of family—”

“Rich people,” Stephanie scoffs, nose in the air. Then she slants a look at Johnny, smiles somehow with her full body, and Johnny feels his throat catch.

Byoungjun-hyung opens the door on Johnny’s side. “Any day now,” he says, before shutting it again with a slam.

Johnny and Stephanie reach for their seat belts and get out of the car, collect her suitcase and her garment bag, and follow Johnny’s manager towards the elevators. The man is already on his phone, no doubt negotiating the logistics of moving the four of them to the resort later that afternoon. NCT 127 should be flying in shortly, since everyone’s official schedules end on the twelfth to give them enough time.

“Hey.” Stephanie reaches out to poke Johnny in the bicep as they get off the garage elevator on the lobby floor and head into the hotel proper, past the front desk and towards more elevators. “You should maybe stop broadcasting so much.”

Johnny’s too distracted by the congregation of fans who wave when they see him, smiling because it’s his job, but underlining that note about doing a live three times in his brain. He never doesn’t have a reason to be thankful so many of Jaehyun and Taeyong’s sasaeng fansites closed down when Dispatch outed them, but right now he’s certainly extra thankful. At least one group of the fans excited to see them seem to just also be visitors to Penang, because one of them is covering her entire face, and the other one keeps hitting her friend. They’re off to the side, wearing backpacks and looking touristy, and clearly not with the cluster of fansites. Johnny smiles at the two of them, because it’s always really nice to happen upon fans organically in the wild, as it were.

He finally looks back at Stephanie when they reach the elevators, pausing to wait. “Sorry, were you saying something?”

Stephanie opens her mouth to speak, but before she can do so, the elevator doors open, and they’re practically assaulted by Lee Taeyong, who looks harried and panicked and immediately grabs Johnny by both arms. “Youngho-hyung, hi,” he says to Johnny. “Hi,” he adds to Stephanie, barely glancing at her. “Look, have you seen Mark? He was supposed to go over the seating arrangements with me, but he freaking disappeared and he—” He stops, practically jumping out of his skin as another pair of arms settles around his shoulders from behind. “ _Fuck_ ,” Taeyong swears. “Jaehyun-ah—”

Jaehyun pecks him on the cheek, effectively silencing the rest of Taeyong’s protests. “Fiancé,” he practically purrs. “Hi,” he adds, like they hadn’t just taken the elevator together. 

Taeyong’s ears have gone a little pink, but he is otherwise very composed. “Hi,” he says back, clearly charmed despite himself. He reaches up so they can link hands—it’s the left one, Johnny notices, the imprint of Jaehyun’s teeth glaringly obvious against the fine bones of Taeyong’s wrist.

“You must be Stephanie,” Jaehyun says, like he’s never met her before. “Hello.” He makes no move to disengage from Taeyong, nor to shake her hand, nor bow.

Stephanie stares between all three of them, clearly not having expected their unique level of crazy, but also clearly being as affected as everyone with a working set of eyes has been by the saccharine sweetness that is Jeong Jaehyun soon-to-be-married. `#ValentineWedding_ ForOur_ValentineBoy` has been trending alongside `#Taeyong_oppa_is_glowing` lately for a reason. “Hi,” says Stephanie.

Jaehyun grins at her, always a dangerous gamble, looking like he does, but made even worse by the fact that he’s so happy that even _Johnny_ fancies he can smell it on him. “I’d shake your hand, but.” Jaehyun trails off, gives Taeyong another squeeze, and goes so far as to nuzzle their cheeks together.

Johnny coughs despite himself. They’re in the lobby and there are fansites around. It’s nothing no one’s never seen before—they were worse at the concerts last month during the week they had to reside in Penang before registering for their marriage—but still.

“Aren’t you two—” Stephanie stops, clearly thinking. “Should you be seeing each other?”

“American tradition,” Jaehyun and Taeyong chorus, and then turn matching grins on Johnny.

Johnny sighs. “Yes, I know, like the—”

“Best man,” Jaehyun finishes, pleased. “But speaking of. Where’s mine?”

Taeyong twists to look at him. “He’s not responding to you either?” he says, honestly concerned. He turns back to Johnny. “Johnny-hyung—”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Johnny says, trying to keep his tone even. “M-mark’s probably sleeping.” He totally doesn’t stutter over Mark’s name and therefore totally doesn’t deserve the look Stephanie shoots him.

“You’re right.” Taeyong at least doesn’t appear to notice. He disentangles from Jaehyun with a kiss to the other man’s wrist that Johnny kind of can’t believe Jaehyun lets him get away with it—he’d believe they were soulmates for that much alone, even without the bite marks that prove it. “Anyways, Hyung.” That’s directed at Byoungjun-hyung, who blinks. “My mom wants to talk to you—my sister—” 

Johnny tunes it all out with the practiced ease of nearly a full year of exposure, shooting Stephanie a conspiratory look. “What do you say we get out of here?” he says in English, trying for slick and cool.

Stephanie blinks back at him, her expression unreadable.

Johnny rewinds the conversation, trying to figure out what they were talking about before they were interrupted by Taeyong. “Hey. What were you saying about broadcasting—”

“Oh, there he is—where’s he going without a manager—Mark-yah!” Taeyong suddenly shouts, and Johnny can’t keep from looking where he’s pointing.

Mark looks very much like a deer caught in the headlights, and while clearly he’d been on his way to sneak out of the hotel without any of their staff, when faced with a radiant, soon-to-be-wed Lee Taeyong, he gives up on that idea quickly. “Taeyong-hyung, Jaehyun-hyung, hi,” Johnny hears him say as he starts walking over to them all.

“It’s good you’re here.” Taeyong finally steps out of Jaehyun’s shadow, and Jaehyun very subtly shifts closer to Johnny, knocking their shoulders together and tipping his head to one side, eyes questioning.

 _You okay?_ his expression seems to ask.

Johnny does his best to look comfortingly and convincingly back. _For sure_.

“This is Johnny-hyung’s girlfriend, Stephanie,” Johnny hears Taeyong introduce, and somehow he doesn’t wheel around and flee. He watches Stephanie smile brightly at a lackluster looking Mark Lee, throat catching.

Jaehyun nudges their shoulders together more solidly this time. “Hyung.”

“It’s fine, Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny says. “I’m fine.”

Jaehyun doesn’t look like he buys that.

“Nice to meet you again,” Mark is saying, without ever looking at Johnny.

Johnny’s throat clogs.

“So seating arrangements?”

“Hyung, for the last time, your mom already went over that with Jaehyun-hyung—”

“Yeah, but here it just says ‘cousin x.’ I don’t have a cousin X.”

“It’s a placeholder, Taeyongie-hyung, oh my God.” Jaehyun leaves Johnny’s side looking charmed despite himself, and like he’d like to cuddle Taeyong some more.

“But—”

“Yeah, it is. And if that’s all, I actually—”

“You shouldn’t go out alone, Mark-yah—”

“I know, but—”

“Hey.” This time it’s Stephanie knocking shoulders with Johnny. He looks down at her, grateful for the distraction.

“Hey,” he says back.

She smiles again, just as stunning as before, but this time Johnny doesn’t feel his heart swoop or his palms sweat or any of it. He’s too focused on Mark, too hyperaware of all the little micro-expressions he’s catalogued, memorized, and learned because he didn’t have the extra sensory stuff. Johnny’s too practiced in the art of reading Mark’s awkwardness—his nervousness—and he’s distracted.

“Oppa.”

Johnny drags his attention away from Mark, who’s tolerating the hold Taeyong now has on both his hands with infinite patience. He licks his lips. “Jagi-yah,” he says.

Stephanie’s eyes crinkle.

Thankfully—blessedly—Johnny’s heart does that thing again, his palms not sweating but still tingling, and he’s so relieved he could almost cry.

“Shall I show you to our room?” he says, genuinely starting to feel more relaxed. He hits the button to call the elevator.

“You may.” Stephanie links their arms, grinning, and Johnny lets her.

“Ow—Mark—that’s my hand—”

“Sorry, Taeyongie-hyung—”

“After you,” Stephanie says, as the elevator dings open. They step inside, the sound of the lobby fading away. They don’t even turn around, just stay facing the mirrored surface as the doors close behind them. Then Johnny pauses, wheeling them in a circle so he can select the floor number.

“What were you saying about broadcasting?”

“Nothing.” Stephanie lets go of his arm but stands close to him so that she can look at the lit up number four, pressing one manicured finger to the button. “Don’t think about it.”

“Okay,” says Johnny.

* * *

Johnny comes out of the shower later that day to a barrage of text messages, first in the NCT 127 group chat, and then in his private chats with Ten, Doyoung, and Mark. They’re finally all starting to arrive at the resort, WayV having landed first, followed by Doyoung, Taeil, and Yuta. Jungwoo is playing hyung and flying in tomorrow with Donghyuck, Renjun, and Chenle. Jaemin and Jeno are coming sometime early tomorrow, but their flight info is too far back in the chat for Johnny to look for.

He’s alone in his room because Stephanie has gone out exploring on the island with a stylist, so there’s no one around to stop him from opening the messages from Mark. Because even though a good portion of them are in the NCT 127 group chat, they’re all from Mark.

Johnny’s… fine with that.

`Did all of you know Johnny-hyung had a girlfriend?` the first message says, sent with the innocence of someone who clearly hadn’t realized Johnny was going to be able to see.

He shuts his eyes, exhales, and keeps reading.

`Why didn’t you tell me?` Mark’s said next. Then, `why didn’t he tell me?` And finally, `oh my god.` No punctuation, no capitals, just three English words, practically bleeding panic.

Johnny scrolls through the rest of chat with a detached sort of mindlessness, switching to his private messages with Mark after only a few comments from a clearly confused Taeil (`lol, you didn’t know?`), and a clearly bemused Jaehyun (`oh my god Mark Leeeee.`). He navigates through Mark’s landslide of comments, ending with, `oh my god Johnny-hyung I’m so sorry can we pretend I didn’t say anything Stephanie’s great I’m happy for you I’m so sorry.`

Johnny feels like he can see the panic in each pixelated letter.

`Sure`, he types, and sets his phone down for the rest of the night.

* * *

Johnny and Mark actually do give best man-type speeches once the vows have been said and the MC has walked Jaehyun and Taeyong through getting married, and they kiss, and there is cheering from all of NCT, and everyone is trying to wrestle in close enough to give them their money and go. It’s not like Johnny was trying to get out of it, but he only stands up dramatically with the microphone because Mark is making eyes at him, and then, like, it’s not hard to wax poetic about Jaehyun and Taeyong and _Jaehyun and Taeyong_ , for a few minutes. Johnny has always been good at giving these sorts of speeches, and he honestly does feel like he grew up with them both, watched them go from friends to lovers to partners over the span of fifteen years, so. It’s not hard. Johnny notices that more than just Taeyong, Taeyong’s mom, and Jaehyun’s mom are crying after he sits down.

“Wow,” Mark says, into the microphone. He gets laughs from the NCT-dominated tables, and more than a few whispers of confusion from the family-dominated ones. “How do I top that?” More laughter, cheering, Donghyuck cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting.

Johnny tries to laugh with everyone else, but it comes out forced.

“So.” Mark seems awkward, but Johnny can tell he isn’t, not really. He’s done more than his fair share of MCing, more than his fair share of ending and intermediary ments, and he’s at home, on a stage, with a microphone. “Jaehyun-hyung is my soulmate.”

There is stunned silence from the peanut gallery, and Donghyuck starts making mosquito noises, loudly.

Mark colors slightly but keeps going. “Only… not really,” he says. “Because it turns out, Jaehyun-hyung is _Taeyong-hyung’s_ soulmate.”

And… Johnny doesn’t know how he’s going to do this, but it’s Jaehyun and Taeyong’s special day and they look so happy, sitting pressed up against one another at the table watching Mark with fond, fond eyes, even as Jaehyun’s relatives whisper amongst themselves and someone says, not at all quietly, “why are they all giving speeches?” and someone else replies, “I think they’re the Americans,” like that explains it.

Johnny can do this… watching Mark Lee talk about first loves and first kisses and relationships that transcend arbitrary social boundaries. Watching Mark Lee laugh, and smile, and crack jokes that ease the tension in the room and make people stop fidgeting with the urge to present Taeyong and Jaehyun with their monetary gifts and get on the first plane back to Seoul.

Johnny can do this.

Johnny—

Johnny _can’t do this_. At one-point Mark stops looking at Jaehyun and Taeyong and for some reason starts looking mostly at Johnny, and Johnny… Johnny thought he could do this, but he’s not so sure anymore. The only reason Johnny’s even surviving is Ten, sitting next to him at the table holding his hand with both of his, so tight it should hurt, but somehow just grounding enough to get Johnny through it.

It’s bad.

He thinks everyone in at least 127 has picked up on it except Taeyong, who appears to be having the utter time of his life. He thinks it’s sweet that Mark’s talking about how Taeyong was Jaehyun’s first kiss; he thinks it sweet how Mark’s talking about how they’ve known each other since 2012, since they were all babies; he thinks it’s sweet, and doesn’t even seem to notice the looks _Jaehyun_ keeps shooting Johnny, in between smiling at Mark, and Taeyong, and at his mother, who has been blowing her nose steadily into a handkerchief procured by his father since about the time they put their teeth into each other at the end of the ceremony proper.

“What the fuck?” Johnny says, out of the side of his mouth, and Ten lets go of his hand to pat him on the thigh and gently extricate Lucas’ hand from his own leg.

Lucas grins at Ten, shooting him a smile that says he was only making do, since both of Ten’s hands were occupied.

Ten just rolls his eyes and gives Lucas his left hand, the right one tightening around Johnny’s fingers. “You got this, Johnny-hyung,” he says in English. “You got this.”

“I got this,” Johnny says to himself, as Mark is finishing his speech and sitting down so suddenly that it inspires a laugh from most of the surrounding relatives. “I got this—”

“I’m going to give a speech too,” one of Jaehyun’s uncles says, standing.

“Uh—” says Jaehyun, but it’s too late. His and Taeyong’s relatives are practically queueing to give speeches, and in the surrounding chaos of well wishes and happy atmosphere, Johnny doesn’t notice when Mark nicks a bottle of champagne straight off an empty buffet table and disappears for almost twenty minutes.

* * *

“Hey,” a voice says nearly half an hour later, and Johnny looks up from where he’s been busying himself on his phone, standing next to Ten on the side of the dance floor. Stephanie had excused herself to go dance with anyone who’d dance with her, ending up more often than not with Yuta as a partner, and Johnny hadn’t had the heart to tell her not to. It wasn’t like they really needed to be attached at the hip, or anything; just having her there had been enough. He still finds himself looking for her, more than a little desperately, when he realizes that the voice is attached to Mark, though.

“Hey,” Johnny manages.

Mark looks skinny and pale and uncomfortable, and he’s lost the suit jacket he started the evening with, his tie loosened and haphazardly done. “Isn’t that your girlfriend?”

Johnny looks where Mark’s pointing to find that it is Stephanie, twirling the dance floor with Taeil this time, her head thrown back in clear amusement. “Uh, yeah, that’s Stephanie.”

Mark looks somehow even paler and more uncomfortable. “I’m—you’re not—bothered?” His voice goes up at the end, expression suddenly very shy, and Johnny notices Doyoung out of the corner of his eye, looking for some reason, utterly despairing.

“Um,” says Johnny. “No?”

Mark looks between Johnny, Ten (who Johnny had honestly forgotten until right this moment, and is for some reason, practically boring holes in Mark with his eyes), and Taeil and Stephanie. “Cool,” he says. “I’m just gonna—” And then he walks off, turning straight on his heel and going right past Doyoung, who Johnny hears exclaim loudly, “What the fuck was that?”

He turns to Ten. “What Doyoungie said,” he says.

Ten just keeps staring at Mark’s back, expression terrifying. “Hey, Xuxi,” he says out the side of his mouth. “Your friend is an asshole.”

“Hey,” Lucas says, looking between Mark, Ten, and Johnny. “Hey, no.”

“An asshole,” Ten continues. “Come on.” He stops staring at Mark’s retreating form and grabs hold of Johnny’s hand, drags him away from the edge of the dance floor. “Dance with us. Take your mind off it.”

Johnny lets Ten drag him towards the center of the floor and does his best to put Mark Lee right out of his mind, if not his heart.

* * *

What feels like five hours later, Johnny is still dancing with Ten, but this time only because Lucas has found himself an admirer among one of Taeyong’s relatives and is spinning rapidly in circles with the little girl on his back. Johnny is having a considerably nicer time in this Mark Lee-less world, and is thus less than impressed when on the end of a spin that leaves him dizzy, he finds himself nearly nose to nose with said Mark Lee.

“Hi,” Mark says again. “Johnny-hyung.Ten-hyung. Do you mind if I cut in?”

“What?” Johnny feels kind of like a popped balloon, and Ten’s gone back into his menacing mode, full-on growling a little this time.

“He’s dancing with me,” Ten says tightly. “Get your own.”

Mark can clearly hear, but he’s standing his ground, chin lifted stubbornly. “Don’t you already have a date, Ten-hyung?” he says, like throwing a harpoon into a whale.

Ten opens his mouth to spear right back, but before he can, Lucas arrives sans child to carry him away. “Time to dance with me, now,” he says, lifting Ten briefly so that he can drop both of Ten’s feet on top of his own, and then walking the two of them away. “Bye, Johnny-hyung.” He doesn’t even address Mark, just keeps grinning down at Ten until he stops looking quite so murderous.

Johnny watches them go, feeling more than a little exposed. “Uh,” he says again.

“Do you—would you like to dance? With me?” Mark sticks out his hand.

Johnny takes it, his ears ringing like he’s having an out of body experience. “Sure…” Which is how he ends up on the dance floor, surrounded by mostly NCT and some of Jaehyun and Taeyong’s braver relatives, who are clearly not used to such a long wedding, but are enjoying the DJ all the same. Mark’s got one hand on Johnny’s waist and the other in Johnny’s own and he’s _staring_ at Johnny, gnawing and worrying at his lips so badly that Johnny worries he’s going to bloody them. “Mark,” he starts to say.

“Are you avoiding me?” Mark says, before Johnny can finish.

There is a surprising amount of quiet despite the music blasting at them from at least three speakers and Lee Donghyuck being present.

Johnny could lie. Johnny could laugh and make a joke and pretend everything was okay. He could watch Mark laugh and smile and relax, the tension in his shoulders easing, the anxiety between his brows dissipating. He should lie. He could lie. He—

Johnny’s so fucking tired, is the thing.

“You know what, yeah,” he says, stopping them in the middle of the floor, thankfully not near anyone he knows, or doesn’t want to overhear. “I am avoiding you.”

Mark stares at Johnny like he honestly hadn’t been expecting an answer, let alone that one. “Oh,” he says finally. “Oh, okay, um.”

Johnny is starting to feel awkward, but certainly they can’t just keep dancing? He starts to do so anyway, moving his feet in pointless circles in time to the beat, and trying not to feel something about how Mark just follows his lead.

“Did I—did I do something to upset you?” asks Mark.

Johnny stares at him for two more half steps. “Why are you asking me this, Mark?” He doesn’t recognize his own voice. He can’t hear himself think. He moves almost as if on autopilot, his hold on Mark’s fingers going in and out of focus.

Mark gets an odd, ugly look on his face, before he says, with rehearsed practice, “I’m… upset that you didn’t tell me about Stephanie.”

Johnny stares. “You’re upset that I didn’t tell you about Stephanie,” he repeats.

Mark nods. “Yes—I—” He’s looking somewhere over Johnny’s shoulder, but when Johnny tries to spin them to see, all he can see is Doyoung, dancing with a pretty girl and looking completely at ease. “I thought you would tell me.” He mumbles that last bit, finally sounding less robotic, more raw.

Johnny kind of wants to shake him. “Mark, you,” he says. “You didn’t ask?”

Mark looks back up at him immediately, eyes huge. “Hyung—”

“You _never_ ask,” Johnny says, and now he’s the one who feels raw. “Fuck.” He stops them in the middle of the dance floor again, pulls away from Mark’s hold, and runs a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m not doing this. Just pretend I never said anything.” He smiles, and it’s his fake idol smile. “Of course I’m not avoiding you.” He keeps smiling. “Good dance. It’s almost like you’re famous for it, or something—” He goes to leave.

“Johnny-hyung!” Mark calls after him.

Johnny stops.

“I’m—” Mark sounds like he’s fighting to get the words out, and like he’s angry about it, but Johnny can’t bring himself to look, knows if he looks, he’ll stay, and he can’t stay. He needs to go find Ten, to find Jaehyun, to find literally anyone other than Mark, to take his mind off it. He should have stayed attached at the hip with Stephanie, not to keep up their farce, but instead in the interest of keeping his own sanity. “I’m jealous,” Mark says, like he’s pulling teeth. “I’m upset because I’m jealous.”

Johnny turns around, not sure if he wants to start fighting or crying. “You’re jealous?” he says. He’s suddenly aware they’ve both been speaking English, have been speaking English since Mark first approached him on the dance floor, and it’s a relief, even if it is a double-edged sword. This is what fifteen years of familiarity is, shifting languages without even thinking about it, finishing each other’s sentences, getting destination married in Malaysia after showing up to military band schedules with each other’s claim marks in plain view, oh wait, wrong couple, wrong box, the long stick, just Johnny’s luck—

Johnny comes closer to Mark, stands so near that Mark has to crane to look up at him, and Johnny revels in his power.

Mark looks up sheepishly with a shy, charming look in his eyes. It’s unfair. His entire face is unfair. Johnny is so tired and a little tipsy and Jaehyun and Taeyong just got _married_ , this is their _wedding_ , not ten feet away from him he can see the back of Jaehyun’s head, watch the two of them sway in perfect, endless harmony.

Ten and Lucas are somewhere doing much of the same—even Taeil brought a date.

Johnny is—Johnny can’t _do_ this.

“Why are you jealous? Do you—do you—like Stephanie?”

“I’m jealous _of_ Stephanie,” Mark blurts. “Oh my God, Hyung, I don’t even _know_ her, I met her like, two times?”

Johnny feels cruelness bubble up inside him. “So you do remember her.”

Mark colors. “She was—I was—I mean the tour—”

Johnny feels his lips pull into a sneer. “I see,” he says.

“I’m jealous of Stephanie because I—I _like you_ , Johnny-hyung,” says Mark, and all the wind comes out of Johnny’s sails.

It feels like the emotional equivalent of getting hit by a truck, and Johnny has to just stand there and take it, as couples move around them on the dance floor, as Donghyuck steals one of the microphones and starts giving live commentary of Jaehyun and Taeyong on the dance floor, as Taeil takes pity and wrestles it away from him, saying, “Sorry for that, everyone, it is past his bedtime,” like Donghyuck is sixteen again, not freshly-turned twenty-eight.

Johnny stands there and stares at Mark and _takes it_ , until he can’t take it anymore. He cuts into whatever tirade of nervousness Mark’s in the middle of by grabbing him by the hand, interrupting whatever bout of nonsense Mark’s spouting without so much as a thought, and hauls, not even thinking about where they’re going, just that they have to go _somewhere else_.

“I’m sorry, Johnny-hyung,” Mark is saying, as they pass Jaehyun’s parents, Taeyong’s parents, Taeyong’s sister and his nephew. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t going to say anything—I’m ruining Jaehyun-hyung’s wedding—but Doyoung-hyung was saying you… he said things and I—I mean I only just noticed—”

“Mark-yah,” Johnny says, as they pass through the doorway and leave the ballroom, heading towards the elevators. “Shut up.”

Mark abruptly stops talking mid-sentence and says nothing for the entire journey to the elevators, up to the floor their suites are on, until they’re standing outside of his room. “Oh, we’re going to my room—you know which is my room—”

“Where’s your room key?” says Johnny.

Mark produces it from a suit pocket, eyes very wide. “Johnny-hyung—”

Johnny swipes the door open and tugs Mark through, his hold on Mark’s wrist not letting up until the door has slammed behind them. The metallic click of the mechanized lock sliding back into place is loud in the glaring silence.

“Johnny-hyung,” Mark says again.

Johnny practically throws him towards the center of the room, shoving his own hands into his pockets, in case Mark gets it in his head that he should touch Johnny, or something. He kicks out of his dress shoes; watches Mark do the same with considerably more finesse. “You _like_ me?” Johnny says, the sentence coming out a question. “Explain.”

Mark blinks at him, resembling a very unattractive goldfish. “What—Johnny-hyung—”

“ _Explain_ ,” repeats Johnny, feeling about as brittle as he sounds. “What does that”—his voice breaks like it hasn’t since he was a literal teenager—“What does that mean?”

Mark is staring at him with pink spotting across both cheeks, and normally Johnny would feel bad, would try to disperse the tension or change the subject and lift the mood. He doesn’t. He just keeps looking at Mark like he’s got him under a microscope, hands holding tight to the skin of his own thighs. “You—like—me,” Johnny says, in three disjointed words.

For a second, he thinks Mark is going to back down. But then he lifts his head, stubbornness in the tight line of his jaw, and pointedly meets Johnny’s eyes. “I do,” he says.

Johnny has no words. He laughs. It comes out nasty. “Right, as friends, right?”

Mark’s confidence falters. “What? No, Johnny-hyung—”

“And since when have you ‘liked’ me?” asks Johnny, hands coming out of his pockets to make air quotes. It’s a mistake, because Mark darts forwards immediately and grabs him by both hands, eyes frighteningly earnest.

“Johnny-hyung,” he says, like a broken record. He holds on with surprising force and goes up on his tiptoes so he can stare hard into Johnny’s eyes. “Why are you being like this? Of course I mean it—I—I’m _sorry_ I mean it, and nothing has to change if you don’t—” He stops talking and finally looks away, definitely wanting to run his hands through his hair, or something, but clearly not able to because he can’t risk letting go of Johnny’s hands; Johnny hates that he knows him like this; hates that he knows him that well; hates that he _loves_ him that well— “I mean, of course you don’t,” Mark says quickly. “Of course, you don’t. What was I thinking? Doyoung-hyung and Jaehyun-hyung were obviously just shitting with me—I’ll just go—”

Johnny tightens his grip on Mark’s fingers, finally glad they’re holding hands. “Of course, _I_ don’t mean it?” he says, repeats, gets out like coughing up glass. “Of course, _I_ don’t mean it?”

Mark’s staring at him with large, hurt-looking eyes. “Hyung,” he says. And then, like he’s only just remembering the original question, “Probably since you kissed me?”

Johnny… has no words.

“I mean—I wasn’t—I didn’t exactly realize—”

“We slept together,” Johnny says, letting go of Mark’s hands and stepping a leg length back. “Seven years ago. When you were afraid of your own knot.”

Mark’s ears blush, but he doesn’t deny any of it.

“And I suppose me bringing Stephanie to Jaehyun’s wedding had nothing to do with your little epiphany,” Johnny continues.

“I’m sorry.” Mark looks miserable.

Johnny can’t look at him. “Right,” he says. “Well, you’ve told me, so.”

Mark looks at him instantly. “Hyung,” he says, and it’s beseeching, until he must see something in Johnny’s eyes, breathe in something in Johnny’s scent. His nostrils flare and his pupils dilate and he’s coming closer, hands claw-like in front of him like he wants to touch Johnny, like he wants to hold him, but is too afraid to. Johnny doesn’t know if _he_ wants him to, and it’s terrifying. “Hyung, I—like—you.” His voice cracks. Johnny’s heart aches.

“I—” Johnny says. He finds himself swaying closer, head-bending-forward closer, mouth-parting-involuntarily closer. “But you—seven years, Mark Lee.”

Mark looks up at him with sudden ferocity. “I was an idiot,” he enunciates. “An absolute fucking idiot.”

“You were,” Johnny says. When Mark takes him by the hands again, he lets him.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Mark says. “I—I’ll prove—” He seems to stop himself, bites down hard on his lip bottom lip, conflicted.

“Hey—”

“I like you,” Mark says again, for the third time. “And, Hyung, you… like me too?” He doesn’t sound like a twenty-eight-year-old superstar. He doesn’t look like a twenty-eight year old superstar.

“Are you sure you’re almost thirty, Mark Lee?” Johnny can’t help but say, can’t help but tease, feeling like he’s finally coming home, like the part of him that was jagged and broken and couldn’t figure out how to even tease Mark properly has been made whole again, complete.

“Shut up. You’re older,” Mark snaps instantly, and then grins. And then he freezes, expression so delicate that it almost hurts.

“Yes,” Johnny says finally. “I do,” Johnny says finally. _Since you were seventeen_ , Johnny thinks finally. _Since I was twenty-four and realized you were all the missing things I didn’t know I needed_.

“Oh.” Mark looks relieved, and then so stupidly happy that Johnny’s already aching heart _throbs_. Then he tries to step away from Johnny to save face. “Oh, well, good, then.” He drags a hand up to rub at the back of his head, stands in the center of a room that has to be costing more money than Johnny really ought to be thinking about, at an island resort for the wedding of two of their best friends.

“Good,” Johnny says. “Mark—”

Mark meets his eyes suddenly. “I mean it,” he says seriously.

“Mark—”

“I _mean_ it,” Mark says again, coming even closer, standing even taller. “I mean it, Johnny-hyung. I—I—”

Johnny leans down and kisses him, because part of him knows what Mark is trying to say, and he’s not sure he’s ready to hear it yet. He knows that there are things they need to talk about. He knows that there are things Mark needs to hear about. He knows there are seven years of hurt and repression and bad decision making they need to talk about—he dedicated an entire box worth of emotional nonsense to the walking disaster that is Mark Lee, and he—Johnny needs to _tell_ Mark, needs Mark to _listen_ , for once, but he—

It has been _seven years_ , and Mark is ready to tell Johnny that he _loves him_ , and Johnny is just—

He’ll kiss Mark instead, lick into Mark’s mouth instead, tangle both hands in the surprisingly soft hair at the back of Mark’s head instead. He’ll walk them back towards Mark’s bed, instead, tumble down on top of Mark onto the bed, instead. He’ll laugh instead, breathless and giddy and like he can’t believe it, when Mark’s staring up at him with his eyes shining and his chest rising.

“I mean it,” Mark says again. “I mean it.”

 _I want to believe you_ , Johnny doesn’t say. “Prove it,” Johnny whispers.

Mark sucks in one long, slow breath. “Okay,” he says. “Fuck me.”

Johnny’s heart feels like for a second, it stops. Mark’s frozen on the bed, looking up at Johnny barely even _breathing_ , but he’s not backing down, not taking it back. He’s not making jokes, or trying to break eye contact, or begging Taeyong to let them change the choreography officially so he doesn’t look like an idiot. He’s just… staring… and Johnny—can’t—breathe. “No,” he hears himself say.

Mark’s expression stiffens.

“No, I won’t fuck you,” Johnny hears himself say. “I’ll make love to you, though.” He regrets the words the moment they come out, feels bad about saying them even though he didn’t mean to say them, didn’t want to say them. Mark’s got two spots of color splashed across both cheeks and he looks about two seconds from fleeing the entire island of Penang, let alone this expensive hotel suite. Johnny feels around in the vast cavern that are his Mark-isms for something—anything—to dissipate the tension—a bad joke, a better joke, a, well, any joke—

“Yeah,” Mark says breathlessly, still blushing, but not looking away from Johnny’s eyes. “Yeah, okay.” He bites his lip. “But—kiss me some more, first?”

And Johnny is lost, honestly, all thoughts of the conversation they need to have first gone from his head. They can do that tomorrow. They can do that after. Now he’ll… he’ll have this, have Mark Lee.

“Will you really let me?” he finds himself saying, as he makes good on Mark’s request and kisses him, shoves him properly down onto the bed and covers him, pressing together thigh to thigh, chest to chest. Johnny wants to kiss Mark until they’re lightheaded and dizzy, but even though it’s so good his heart hurts, Mark keeps making these aborted little noises in between breaks for air, and his eyes are squeezed shut, his hands balling into fists.

Johnny lifts away from his mouth and stares at him, feeling a stone settle into the pit of his stomach. “Mark, you don’t have to—”

“No, Hyung, it’s not that—I just—” says Mark instantly, and he’s moving, hands coming up to hold Johnny by the shoulders so he can push Johnny away. The stone in Johnny’s stomach starts to weigh him down, but then, Mark’s not pushing Johnny away. Mark’s twisting Johnny sideways, turning and rolling him so that he’s the one lying on his back on the bed, he’s the one staring up at Mark on the bed, he’s the one under. When that’s done, Mark wastes no time in climbing back into Johnny’s lap, straddling across his thighs with his own spread wide. His cheeks are practically twin flames but his eyes are frighteningly serious. “I need it to be like this, this time,” whispers Mark. “Sorry.”

Johnny can’t even begin to unpack that. His throat is suddenly so dry that he has to clear it a few times before he can speak. “This time?”

“This time,” says Mark, and starts to sit, lowers his hips back until they’re touching, the heat from Mark’s skin palpable through the layers of both their suits.

Johnny feels light-headed. “You alpha,” he says, aiming for teasing.

Mark’s eyes go dark. “Your alpha,” he says, nothing but serious.

Johnny swallows. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

The thing about the tuxedos that Taeyong and Jaehyun demanded is, they’re very, very nice, and Johnny and Mark certainly looked amazing in all of the photos, but they’re terribly hard to get off, especially since Johnny can’t seem to keep his hands off of Mark, now that he’s allowed. Especially since Mark can’t seem to keep his hands off of _Johnny_ , now that _he’s_ allowed. Especially since neither of them can seem to decide who’s taking off who’s clothes, fingers getting tangled around ties and waistcoats and the large, floral boutonnieres all of 127 were wearing because Taeyong insisted. Johnny’s always described himself as 127’s fashionista, but even he has to admit, less would have been more, in this situation.

“This may just be the end of _Johnny’s Fashion Evaluation,_ ” he tells Mark’s left cheek, as Mark performs a frankly undignified shimmy with most of his weight shoved into Johnny’s neck and torso, so that he can get his shirt, waistcoat, and suit jacket off. “I don’t even know how many episodes we’re at now, but this just might be the end—”

Mark finally frees both hands and hurls the offending garments across the room with an amount of force that Johnny feels isn’t entirely unwarranted. “Sorry, what are you talking about?” he asks. He still looks a little nervous, but he’s starting to come into his own; less awkwardly determined and more casually sexy. Johnny wonders if he should call up Baekhyun-hyung to find out why that is, why it’s taking off his clothes that imbues Mark with confidence. Though he supposes it could just be the abs.

“When did you get abs, Mark Baby Lee?” mutters Johnny.

Mark blinks down at him, and then smiles, even as he leans in and settles both hands on Johnny’s hips. “Sorry, what are you talking about?” He drops his eyes down to stare blatantly at Johnny’s own bare torso, and then looks back up at Johnny’s face.

Johnny cannot believe that he’s here. That he wants this. (That he gets to _have_ this.) “That you are talking too much,” he says.

Mark snorts at him. “Yeah, okay, Johnny-hyung,” he says, and bends down to kiss Johnny some more. “Chocolate abs Johnny-hyung.” He fucking nips at Johnny’s lip this time when they separate, hips starting to work in tiny, teasing circles.

“Fucker,” Johnny says into his mouth, fucking his hips up partly so he can listen to Mark’s breath hitch when their dicks line up, but also so that he can start to try to take off his belt and pants. Maybe he’ll leave the socks on. There’s something weirdly sexy about that. “You must admit you are doing a surprising amount of talking.”

Mark stares down at him, watching as Johnny gets the buckle of his belt undone and then sets about inching his pants down his bare legs. Johnny decides to ditch the socks too, distracted by Mark getting his own pants off, ending up just in his boxers still perched across Johnny’s lap. Johnny has to go up on his elbows so he can better look at him.

“I mean compared to last time, not really,” Johnny says. “But you’re doing much better now—five stars. No drowning in the Han river.” It might be a bad play for Johnny to reveal just how much he remembers of last time, but he can’t help but show his hand, can’t help that he’s dipped into Mark Lee losing his virginity for more than a few ill-timed unboxings, and had to call Jaehyun so he could go out and get suitably drunk. “A definite upgrade.”

For some reason, this line of teasing seems to make Mark blush, and for two seconds Johnny thinks he’s gone too far. But then Mark gets a hard, steely look in his eye, and leans down to suck a particularly vicious feeling bruise right up against Johnny’s throat. “I was an idiot in 2019,” he says to the marked-up skin there immediately after. “An absolute fucking _idiot_.”

Johnny should not be hard enough to cut glass over Mark Lee swearing in English, but he is anyway. “You were,” he manages. “You absolutely were.”

“Mmm.” Mark presses down right against Johnny’s cock and grinds, eyes half-lidded. He’s not really providing friction so much as he is putting pressure, but Johnny knows enough about alphas to get it. “I know one way you could get me to stop talking.”

Johnny scrambles up to pull Mark fully down on top of him, laying back against the bed and giving himself over to kissing him. He hitches a leg up around Mark’s hips and holds him, shuts his eyes and does his best not to give into the urge to just roll him over, pin him to the bed and _give it to him_. “Are you sure?” he says rather nonsensically in between kisses and gasps for air. “Are you certain?” More kisses against the skin of Mark’s pretty, pretty mouth, more shared air. “Maybe for only a second—” Johnny shifts and does roll them, gets Mark on his back and cradles him by the back of the neck, holds him in place and kisses him, nuzzles at him, pulls back startled when Mark bites at him, eyes wide. He’s breathing hard and his thighs are shaking but he stays there, on his back, looking up at Johnny.

“A second,” Mark manages. “Two seconds—” Johnny leans in and kisses him some more and Mark lets it happen for three more seconds, before pushing Johnny’s face away with an open palm and what sounds like a yowl. “Fuck—I hate this—I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Johnny tells him, and drops back onto his back so that Mark can drape himself back over him. “Don’t apologize—you’re doing so good, Mark—”

“Oh my God, shut up, Johnny-hyung, you sound like a bad porno—”

“Or Jaehyunnie,” Johnny can’t help but mutter, scarred from more than a few horrifying walk-in-ons.

Mark shudders. “Please don’t remind me—”

Johnny laughs and reaches up a hand so he can hold Mark by one flushed cheek. “You don’t want to think about our illustrious hosts, whose wedding has brought us here today?” he asks.

Mark makes an odd face and almost winces, before—so quickly that Johnny would swear he’d imagined it if not for the fact that he stays there—turning to press a kiss right into the center of Johnny’s palm. “I want you to take off your pants, Johnny-hyung,” says Mark.

Johnny slides his hand down so that he can drag a thumb across Mark’s bottom lip and wet it on the tip of his tongue. “I’m not wearing pants,” he says. “Just boxers.”

Mark’s eyes flick down Johnny’s bare chest to rest on the waistband of said boxers and the impressive jut of his cock, more than interested in the proceedings—in Mark. “Take off your boxers, then,” he says.

Johnny does. “This seems unfair,” he says, once he’s naked and laid bare across Mark’s clean white hotel bed sheets, laid back against the pillows with only his arms in his lap keeping him from being fully exposed. “You’re still wearing yours—”

Mark gets his boxers off lightening fast, almost sliding off the bed in his haste to get back in Johnny’s lap, like he’s trying to hide. Johnny separates his hands out of his lap with careful slowness, pulling him closer so that their dicks meet. “Mark Lee—” he starts to say.

“I love you,” Mark mumbles and then leans down and seems to do his best to swallow Johnny’s tongue, keeping him from saying anything in return. Not that Johnny wants to. (He does.) Not that Johnny is going to. (He should.) He’ll save that for tomorrow morning, for after, for when their friendship may not survive this, whatever this is. Proof. Making love. Fucking. The last swan song of a dying man, perpetually in love with his best friend.

Johnny pets one hand over the small of Mark’s back, and without trying to think too hard about it, moves further down so that he’s holding him by the ass, fingers just stroking the skin around his hole. He pauses mid-kiss. “Wait—”

Mark doesn’t want to wait, had squeaked a little when Johnny started petting him there, but ultimately breathed through it and rocked his hips back, fucked his cock up against Johnny’s abs until they were both whining—Mark because of the friction, Johnny because Mark was starting to get so into it even he could smell it.

“Wait—” Johnny says again. “I’ve thought of a problem. I don’t have lube—we definitely need lube—”

“I have lube,” Mark says in one rush. “I have lube. Wait here.”

Johnny watches him get off of him and then off of the bed; watches him wander over to where he’s tossed his pants; watches him scramble through the pockets and produce a familiar looking tube. He blinks. “Why the fuck are you carrying lube?” he says.

For a few moments Mark looks like he might not get back on the bed, but then he seems to get with the program, and sidles back up to Johnny on his knees. “It’s not important,” he says, as he slides back into Johnny’s lap. “Don’t read too much into it.” He risks a smile, then drops the bottle onto Johnny’s abs. “Anyway, here.” His smiles goes even wider.

Johnny looks between him and the bottle of lube, and then sighs. “You’re lucky I love you too,” he mumbles, words barely audible because he’s really _said it_ , and uncaps the lube as a distraction. It’s not as good as Mark’s had been—sticking your tongue down someone’s throat really was a surefire way to make them forget the fact that you’d confessed your undying affection to them only moments prior—but it does keep Mark from moving, because now he’s too focused on the rapidly warming liquid Johnny’s getting all over his fingers, expression an odd mix of eager and hesitant. “Mark?”

“Condoms,” Mark blurts. “Jaehyun didn’t give me—I don’t have condoms.”

Johnny loves him so much that he’s not going to touch the first half of that sentence. (Although that’s maybe because he’s got the lube _all over his fingers_ , and he doesn’t need to know if the same stuff has been all over, say, _Taeyong’s fingers_.) “I do,” he says, gesturing towards his own pants.

“In your pockets?” blurts Mark, for some reason looking… charmed.

Johnny snorts. “No, in my wallet, you ass.”

“Your ass,” Mark says, but scoots to the end of the bed so he can grab the pants and wallet in question, making a fucking show of grabbing the condom out of it once he’s done. He fucking puts it in his mouth, smirking.

Johnny stares at him for all of a second, before rapidly reaching for the lube and squeezing out even more, coating his fingers more solidly before sticking the middle one right up in the air.

Mark laughs, the condom dropping out of his mouth onto the bed and comes hurrying back up to meet Johnny. There’s quite a lot of kissing once they get there, quite a lot of not doing anything else, and it’s messy because Johnny’s got lube all over his hand and Mark clearly is into hair pulling, keeps making these fucking _noises_ whenever Johnny tugs just so, and it’s distracting.

“I think you’ve got lube in my hair,” Mark says when they pull apart.

Johnny drags his clean hand down his entire face. “I’m about to put lube in all sorts of other places, Mark-yah,” he says. “That’s kind of the point—”

“Oh, haha,” Mark says. “You say that like I didn’t put four fingers in _your_ ass.”

Johnny takes a moment to think back to that moment, trying to decide if he’s ready to let Mark get away with joking about it. “And yet you hit my prostate maybe once,” he says finally.

Mark ducks his head, back to blushing. “Shut up,” he mumbles. “I’ll be better this time.”

Johnny blinks at him as innocently as possible. “While doing what, exactly?” he says. “Sitting on my gigantic cock?”

“Blowing your—”

“Blowing my gigantic cock—”

“Blowing your _mind_ —it’s not that gigantic—”

Johnny flops back on the bed with great aplomb, both hands going up behind his head to prove his point.

Mark stares down. And stares down. And… stares down. “Fuck,” he says finally. “Has it always been this big? I mean—are we sure that’ll fit—”

“You have a knot, I don’t,” Johnny says. “I mean—I have an ass, you don’t—”

“Excuse you—”

“But I think we can make it work,” Johnny finishes, and then waggles his fingers. “Now. Come here.”

Mark laughs like he can’t believe himself but comes closer anyway. Johnny works him up to three fingers, staying safely on his back because Mark keeps making these noises and screwing up his face like he doesn’t know how to feel about how he likes it, getting fingered, being full. He keeps panting out these little almost-laughs, keeps dropping his head down to stare at his cock as if to assure himself that it’s still hard. There’s a surprising lack of commentary. It’s nice. Johnny feels nice.

“Condom,” Mark says finally, on the edge from Johnny’s fingers. “Condom—fuck—condom—”

Johnny pulls his fingers free and reaches for the abandoned square, tearing it open without any sarcastic remark.

“You know,” Mark is saying, as Johnny rolls it on, a whine coming out as he gives attention to his own, neglected cock. “I’m starting to feel even more kinship with Jaehyun-hyung—”

Johnny grabs him by the thighs and hauls, sliding him up the bed so he’s optimally positioned. “Mark,” he says. “What have I said about talking about Jaehyun when I’m _fucking you_?”

Mark looks down at him with pink cheeks and an open mouth. “I thought you said you were going to make love to me?” he says. Then, “are you sure you don’t have a crush—”

Johnny doesn’t know what to do with the fact that apparently he’s not the only one who replayed their one night together enough to remember all the bad jokes. So he puts the head of his dick in Mark. Which—

Mark stills, head falling back and spine almost liquifying, it looks like, and Johnny stills. “Mark—”

“Shh.” Mark’s got his eyes closed and his hands on both thighs and he’s shaking, trembling, squiggling his hips in tiny circles. Johnny shifts around on the bed trying to help, inadvertently pressing his dick in further and making Mark yelp, eyes popping open.

“Sorry—”

“Oh my _God_ , Hyung, I’m sorry—I _like it_ —” Mark says, more than a little jumbled.

Johnny stares. “You—what?”

“I like _you_ ,” Mark continues, addressing the ceiling. “Oh _fuck_ —” He sinks down what has to be way too fast, chest heaving as he stops when their hips meet. “That’s—you’re—ngh,” he says rather eloquently.

“Yes,” Johnny decides. “Is it okay?”

Mark drops his head forward again, chin meeting his collarbones, and stares. “Is it okay?” he says.

Johnny nods. “Yeah, I mean, since you’re an alpha—”

“’M your alpha, yeah,” says Mark, and gazing back up at the ceiling so that his back bows, hands falling forward to land on the headboard. “Hah,” he moans. “Hah—Johnny-hyung.”

Johnny can only put his hands on Mark’s hips and hold. “Yeah?”

“Fuck me,” Mark groans. “Fuck. Make _love_ to me—” He lets go of the bed and tips forward, ending up with his hands on Johnny’s shoulders and his face hovering over Johnny’s. He’s flushed and breathing hard and within kissing distance, now.

It is a lot.

Johnny doesn’t even know what to _do_ with him. “Mark-yah.”

Mark grins at him.

Johnny loves him. He kisses him. He gives up on gentle for a few seconds, gives in to instinct and fucks up and down a few times, twists his hips on the upstroke until he finds the spot that makes Mark shudder, pets behind his ears and tries to lean up to keep kissing him but gets distracted. “Fuck, Mark—”

“Do that again, Johnny-hyung—”

 _I love you_ , Johnny thinks, but doesn’t say. _I love you_. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever have this again but he _loves_ Mark, can’t believe he gets to _fuck_ Mark. (Make love to Mark. Press tender loving fingers into Mark, kiss Mark, hold Mark.) 

Johnny pulls out of the kiss.

Mark is tight around his cock and Johnny would be lying to say he’s not enjoying it, but he’d really rather like to take a more active role this time. This… first time. This is another first time, for Mark, for Johnny, who’s never fucked around with alpha men before. Like, he’s slept with other alphas, obviously, but never like this. Never someone like this. Never someone who’s his soulmate, who has to be his soulmate, who—if Mark asked, Johnny would claim him right here, and isn’t that terrifying, isn’t that horrifying, isn’t that exactly why Johnny developed the box to begin with? People weren’t supposed to meet their alpha soulmates at fifteen, certainly not betas or alphas—anyone not an omega—certainly not idols, certainly not _Johnny_ (since Taeyong did; Taeyong did; Taeyong did—).

“Johnny-hyung.” Mark’s staring down at Johnny with a small frown, clearly having picked up on the fact that Johnny’s thoughts have gone off on a mild tangent.

“Right, sorry,” Johnny says, and tightens his hold on Mark’s hips so he can continue to fuck up and then back down, coordinating the movements to Mark’s own rhythm. He watches the way Mark starts to sweat, Mark starts to pant, Mark’s eyes can’t seem to stay open. He listens to Mark’s moans, his groans, the stuttered, aborted Korean curses. What would their old SM teachers think to see them now, so well versed in the language to be nearly fluent while fucking, dialect Mark’s picked up from all manner of hyungs mixing in with the Seoul-specific dialect.

“What about—” Johnny says, and sits up, still holding onto Mark’s hips. He pushes up onto his knees and starts to dip Mark back, still spread across Johnny’s hips, speared on Johnny’s cock and resting on his thighs.

“That’ll work,” Mark says, head craned so that he can keep kissing Johnny, even as his eyelashes flutter and his mouth perpetually hangs open. “I think that’s fine.” His breath stutters on one particularly well timed thrust, a groan dragging free of his throat and his toes curling where they’re still up under his hips. (He’s so fucking flexible. Johnny could cry.) “It’s just the—fuck—back thing, I think—oh—” He’s been keeping both arms draped around Johnny’s shoulders, but now his left hand moves so that he’s holding Johnny by the back of the neck, in the place where he was supposed to for the “Superhuman” choreography and never quite got the hang of it. “Oh, Hyung, please—”

Johnny looks down at Mark’s cock, bright red and weeping, and at the rapidly swelling skin of his knot. He spans one hand against the stretch of Mark’s lower back and drops the other one down to take him in hand, thumbing over his slit like the world’s worst tease. “Please?”

Mark’s eyes flutter open and he stares, mouth hanging even more wide, panting. “Hyung—”

Johnny fingers the head of Mark’s cock, then works his own right up against Mark’s prostate, all the while bending him back, back, back over the bed, trying to see how far he can go before Mark’s dumb alpha brain reengages and tries to fight him off.

“Johnny-hyung—” It seems like it doesn’t have to be that far; Johnny’s not even gone more than a few inches, but already Mark is starting to look mildly panicked. But that might just be because he clearly wants to come, clearly needs to come, clearly wants more than just a barely passable beta handjob. “Johnny-hyung, touch me—please.”

“I already am touching you,” Johnny says, and strokes Mark from tip to base at least three times, careful to avoid giving too much attention to his knot. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“On the—oh—knot—you fucker—thought you said you were going to make love to me—”

“Aren’t you feeling loved, Mark Lee?” Johnny asks, pressing down hard against Mark’s knot on the next stroke, and fucking his hips up for three sharp strikes against Mark’s prostate simultaneously.

Mark makes a garbled, wrecked noise and hangs his head back farther. “Fucking—kiss me—” Johnny leans down and does, stops bending Mark over backwards and lets himself sink back towards the pillows and the headboard, so that they end up where they’d started: Johnny flat on his back, and Mark bent over him impaled on his dick. “Fuck,” Mark says, when they separate, and Johnny blinks his eyes open. “Fuck, Johnny—”

 _I love you_ , Johnny wants to say. One of his legs is still bent under him at an odd angle, but he doesn’t care. He’s somehow still got a hand loosely curled around Mark’s cock, and without prompting, moves down to hold him tight around the knot. “Mark—”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Mark says, and lets go of Johnny so he can hold his face with both hands, sitting straight up on Johnny’s cock and breathing hard. “ _Hyung_ —”

Johnny doesn’t even move his hips, just slowly increases the pressure around the base of Mark’s cock almost like he’s conducting an experiment—how much pressure is too much, how much pressure is straight up orgasm denial, how much pressure is too little—instead of jerking off the love of his life. Mark moves enough for the both of them, grinding his way slowly to completion with his eyes shut. “I—next time—just—smother me—”

Johnny groans at the thought, holds tighter than he’d intended to, stops staying still and fucks up with more force than he’d wanted to—

“Oh—” Mark says. “Oh—”

Johnny sits up and kisses him so he doesn’t have to see him come, kisses him so that he can only feel him come, wet and messy and tightening vice-like around Johnny’s own cock. “Shit,” he says, as he feels his own orgasm start to drag free. “Shit— _Mark_ —” Johnny goes over and it feels like coming home, for lack of a better word, for lack of a better pun, for… being sentimental and stupid and seven years in the making. “Mark,” Johnny says. “Mark.”

“Hyung,” Mark says, in complete agreement. “Hyung, wow.” He flops straight down onto Johnny without a care in the world for how that pulls them apart, and doesn’t even have the decency to be any help at all when Johnny goes to dispose of the condom.

“That’s your problem,” Mark says into Johnny’s chest as Johnny somehow manages to get the thing tied off with only one hand. “Yeah, I sympathize, having had to deal with it myself—”

Johnny wonders if it would be terribly bad etiquette to just shove the used condom into the back of Mark’s head.

“But that is not my problem this time. It is yours.” He looks down to where Johnny’s other hand is still trapped between them nudged up against his knot. “Huh.”

Johnny decides to just not pursue any of that. “I hope you step on it tomorrow morning,” he says around a yawn, then tosses the condom in the vague direction of the trashcan. “Are you turning off the lights?”

Mark lifts his head, narrows his gaze at the light switch, and claps.

Nothing happens, because it’s 2027, not 2127, but Johnny laughs anyway. “Get off me, you big baby,” he says, and tips Mark to the side. “And get a washcloth. We’re gross.”

Mark flips him the middle finger but at least he doesn’t wipe off on the pillows. They end up curled together in the dark avoiding the wet spot, Johnny fighting sleep and too much elation, and Mark continuously yawning right into Johnny’s ear.

“Mark,” Johnny says. “You can go to sleep.”

“You go to sleep,” Mark says.

Johnny snorts. “Baby.”

“Cradle-robber,” Mark immediately replies. “I’m not even your generation. You’re worse than Taeyong-hyung.”

Johnny lifts his head and squints at him in the silence. “Jaehyunnie’s the same generation as you,” he says.

“Oh yeah.” Mark yawns some more. “Maybe you’re not so bad, then.”

Johnny lays back down and hides a grin in his hair, feeling sleep start to nestle into his bones. “I love you,” he tells the crown of Mark’s head. “Even though you’re a different generation.” He smirks, gives him a squeeze, doesn’t stifle his own yawn. “And you made me wait seven years.”

There are still so many things Johnny should say, has to say, needs to hear, but they can do it in the morning. Mark will still be here.

* * *

Johnny wakes up surprisingly well after sunrise, stretches, and feels pleasantly, perfectly sore. His muscles feel well used and his eyes feel well rested and he doesn’t even have a hangover from the after-wedding drinks. The hotel bed was good, the company even better, and he has the memory of Mark Lee telling him he _loved_ him, the memory of Mark Lee letting Johnny make _love_ to him.

He opens his eyes, turns his head.

Mark isn’t there.

That’s—

Fine.

* * *

For five minutes, Johnny is able to pretend that Mark’s just in the bathroom. Mark’s just stepped out to take a phone call, Mark’s taking the world’s quietest shower, Mark’s hiding out of sight and Johnny doesn’t know because Johnny’s near scent blind and couldn’t suss him out with his eyes closed. Mark is still here, in the room; he’s just not in the bed with Johnny.

Mark _hasn’t left_ , because Johnny doesn’t know if he has the capacity to handle that.

“You fucker,” he hears himself say. “You lying, stupid, awful fucker.”

He exhales.

“You idiot,” he hears himself say. “You lying, stupid, awful idiot—” Is he talking about Mark, or himself—

He sits up, swipes angrily at the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes that _isn’t_ tears, and drags both palms across his eyes until they’re clutching at the sides of his own head. He breathes.

`So, I had sex with Mark`, he texts Ten what feels like centuries later. `But he’s gone now, so don’t get too excited about it.`

Ten’s reply is surprisingly quick for eight-thirty in the morning. `You—what?` He even includes the em dash.

`Yeah.`

`Gone?`

Johnny swallows. `Like the wind!` he replies. `But it’s fine, so.` He can’t even bring himself to continue, he’s so unconvincing in his blasé attitude.

`Hyung`, Ten says. `Hyung.`

`Look, I didn’t`— Johnny stops, and deletes the three words. `It’s not like I`— _said I love you to him, or anything_. He deletes the text again, and sighs. He doesn’t throw the phone down on the bed. He doesn’t put his head in his hands and cry. `Maybe he just stepped out for something`, he settles for.

Ten’s disapproval reads loud in clear in the photo he sends—his and Lucas’ door, room number clearly highlighted by a hastily hand drawn circle.

Johnny sighs, but he can’t—it’s even worse, being here alone in Mark’s room. He gets up to put on clothes.

* * *

Ten opens the door looking furious and matter of fact, hovers his hands in the air between them like he can’t decide if touching Johnny is a good idea, and ultimately settles for stepping back pointedly until Johnny has no choice but to come in. He feels like someone’s taken the serrated edge of a knife and started to hack at the skin of his shoulders; like broken porcelain china, and totally worthy of the care Ten is taking.

He steps into the room. “Sorry,” he says, ducking his head. He can see Lucas in the background, wearing swim trunks that still look wet and a t-shirt on backwards. When he looks down at Ten’s legs he finds much of the same, sand clinging the fine hairs lining his shins. “Were you—am I interrupting—”

“You’re not,” Ten says, wincing when he realizes Johnny’s just going to pry worse now. “Well, beach sex, but—” He rolls his eyes and shoves a hand through his own hair. “I’d congratulate you on both of us having the same early morning idea, but, well.” He shrugs, twists his lips into a painful looking smile.

Johnny feels like glass.

“Oh, Hyung,” says Ten.

Johnny throws his shoulders back and stands to his full height.

“Did you—” Ten’s eyes are so very kind. “Did you tell him—”

Johnny just nods, unable to say it out loud.

“Uh—” That’s Lucas, stepping warily closer to the two of them with one of his usual mood-lifting smiles. “Johnny-hyung—”

“And he…” says Ten, ignoring his other half and stepping closer and still hovering an uncertain hand in the air between them. “Doesn’t?”

“Well he left, so,” says Johnny, manages Johnny, and Ten’s hand finally lands on his arm.

“Johnny-hyung.”

“It’s fine,” Johnny says, though it clearly isn’t. “I’m fine. He’s fine. It’s fine that he—left.”

“Johnny-hyung,” Ten says again, and steps even closer. He wraps both arms around Johnny in a hug that is so warm that Johnny can’t help but let tears well up in both eyes. He drops his head down onto the top of Ten’s, tilts his right shoulder forward until he’s resting most of his weight on the other man.

“ _Fuck_ , Ten-ah,” he whispers. “I’m such an _idiot_.”

Ten just holds him tighter, rubs his back harder, and doesn’t make a big deal about the less than dignified sobbing.

* * *

A few minutes later, they’ve relocated to one of the couches in Ten and Lucas’ suite. It’s pretty similar to the one Mark was in and the one Johnny and Stephanie were given, but their view is the more garden than ocean, and Johnny busies himself watching a bird seated on a branch, fluffing and grooming its feathers.

Ten’s over in the corner making use of the provided amenities, talking his way through brewing a pot of tea like they won’t get served complimentary afternoon tea later that day. Johnny knows most of Jaehyun and Taeyong’s extended family will probably leave well before four p.m., but at least all of NCT 127 will probably stay as late as possible. If not to nurse hangovers, then to support Taeyong and Jaehyun.

Johnny, at least, only has plans to see Stephanie off at the airport later that evening; she’s staying late because she wanted to make the most of her all expenses paid Valentine’s Day vacation.

Lucas is on the couch next to him, and every so often when Johnny makes eye contact, he smiles. And whenever Johnny shifts a certain way and the wind blows towards Lucas because of the open windows, his lips part, his nostrils flare, and he shoots a particularly serious looking glower down at his phone, quiet in his massive hand. It’s sweet and would be comforting in any other circumstance, but now all it’s doing is reminding Johnny that he smells just as upset as he probably looks. Ten gave him a hot towel to mop his face up after the crying, and Johnny’s doing his best to make use of it. It won’t do to show up to the airport with a face swollen from crying.

“The beach is really nice, actually, though,” Ten is saying as he finishes pouring a liberal amount of hot water into one of the provided cups. “We went really early in time for the sunrise because Xuxi is _the worst_ —”

Lucas looks up from where he’d been frowning at his silent phone with a bright smile.

“But it turned out to be really nice,” Ten finishes. “Really secluded, nobody around. Taeyongie and Jaehyunnie did good picking this place.” He drops one of the tea bags into the cup and gives it a swirl with a spoon. “Super romantic too, like—” He breaks off, looking at Johnny with large, apologetic eyes, and Johnny lets the towel cover his entire face.

“Are you going to be like this for the rest of the day?” he says.

“Romantic and sappy and—” Whatever stunningly witty ending Ten had for that sentence gets lost by a knocking on the door, loud, frantic pounding.

Johnny peels the towel off of his face and exchanges a look with Ten and Lucas. “Did you—”

“I could have sworn I put up the do not disturb,” grumbles Ten almost simultaneously, crossing the room without the tea to the grab the door handle. He readies an idol smile. “Hi—” He stops, mid-over acting, and the room goes several degrees cooler.

Johnny’s too distracted by Lucas to really notice, because Ten’s other half has practically leapt off the couch, phone still in his hand and expression excited.

“What are you doing here?” Ten snaps, as Lucas skids to a stop behind him. 

Lucas lifts his head like someone’s gone and ruined Christmas, and stands, gaping, glancing between Ten and Johnny and Mark. He says something. Johnny doesn’t really hear what it is. Johnny’s too busy staring at Mark, standing in the doorway with his head held high, and one hand still raised to knock.

“Hi, Hyung,” Mark says to Ten. “Is Johnny-hyung here?”

Johnny briefly thinks Ten is actually going to slam the door in Mark’s face, but before he can do so Lucas finally unfreezes. “Mark,” he says excitedly, continuing to stand over Ten’s shoulder and hold onto the open door. “You came—”

Ten turns his venomous gaze on Lucas, and Johnny gets just a fraction of it and still winces. “You…” He takes in Lucas’ phone, still clutched in his hand. “Texted him?” He sounds betrayed, and for two seconds like he’s going to redirect his ire towards him instead. Then he seems to shake himself and focuses back on Mark. “No—” Ten starts to say.

“Yes, I’m here, Ten, thanks,” says Johnny, with what he hopes is a suitable amount of confidence. “Hi, Mark. Let me guess. You’re here with more excuses.” He doesn’t feel as good as he thought he would after that, but Ten at least shoots him an encouraging look, so Johnny tries to feel vindicated. He also stands up, which puts him taller than most of the room. It’s false power, but it’s power none the same. Johnny’ll take it.

Mark doesn’t rise to Johnny’s baiting, and steps further into the room. Johnny notices he’s barefoot. Johnny notices he’s wound so tight that he’s shaking.

“Well?” he says.

He gets another supportive glance from Ten, who is standing to the side of the door with his arms crossed, clearly unimpressed. Lucas is standing still behind him, looking between the three of them with clear confusion.

“Mark?” says Lucas.

“Xuxi, hi,” Mark says kindly, but he doesn’t look away from Johnny. “I need to talk to you, Johnny-hyung.”

Johnny is hit by sudden déjà vu; starts thinking of things he hasn’t thought of in years. Even Yuta has stopped bringing it up—even Donghyuck. “Let me guess,” he finds himself saying. “You’re not actually Jaehyunnie’s soulmate and it’s a hickey.”

There is a charged pause.

Lucas starts laughing, which almost seems like a reflex, but when even Ten doesn’t smile, he stops, glancing between all of them with even more concern. “Hyung?” he says, and it’s for at least two of them, but Johnny… can’t, right now.

“You,” he says, looking long and hard at Mark, who’s standing in the center of the room with his hands in fists at his sides and his chin jutting out. “You said you meant it.”

Ten makes a punched sounding noise, but Mark just shuts his eyes for half a second. He doesn’t say anything though, which is good, because Johnny might have actually punched him.

“You said you _meant it_ ,” Johnny says. “And you left. You said you _loved_ me,” Johnny says. “And you left. I—I said I loved you,” Johnny says. “And then you _left_.”

Ten is looking between the two of them with rapt attention, but his eyes narrow on that last sentence, mouth turning down at the corners. Lucas makes an odd noise and turns so that his back isn’t to anyone anymore, but he stays quiet too. All the noise in the room is the sound of Johnny breathing, the sound of Mark breathing, the chasm opening in Johnny’s chest completely and betrayingly silent. (It should be louder, shouldn’t it? Here at the end of him and Mark as Johnny knows it.) 

“You left, Mark,” Johnny says. “Why are you here?”

Mark opens his mouth to speak and holds Johnny’s gaze, but it’s Ten who breaks the silence, Ten, who scoffs. He doesn’t say anything, but his expression is worth more than words. Mark looks at him and seems to shrink in on himself a bit, even as he still stands there and takes it. “I need to talk to you,” he says again, to Johnny.

Johnny looks at him. “Well?” he says. “Talk.”

And that’s… Mark looks absolutely shattered for a split second, before he seems to get himself together. He visibly swallows and takes a pointed step towards Johnny.

Ten mirrors him immediately, stepping backwards and looking somehow even more pissed.

Johnny wants to laugh. Clearly Mark doesn’t want to do this with an audience. Or at least, Mark would be more comfortable without an audience, but Johnny doesn’t care—Johnny does care, does notice, aches with it, hates himself for it, hates _Mark for it_ —so he just keeps staring at him with one brow raised. “Well?” he says again.

“I’m an idiot,” Mark says. Evidently, he’s hoping this will go over well. That Johnny will laugh, or at least remember their words from earlier last night, and the ice will break.

Johnny does laugh, but it comes out brittle and mean sounding. Johnny feels brittle and mean. It’s all fine. “Yeah, you said that,” he says.

Mark flinches but doesn’t try to defend himself.

“You said a lot of things,” Johnny says. “Like, that you liked me.”

Ten shoots _Johnny_ the sharp look now, but Johnny ignores him, striding closer. He doesn’t go quite past Ten and Lucas, but he still gets near enough that Mark starts to have to look up at him. It’s something Johnny doesn’t like to do. He’s spent the past eighteen or so years being a beta in the body of an alpha, in a band with predominantly alphas. He knows the ins and outs of social interaction. He knows what it does when he reminds people that he’s the tall one, the stronger one, the older one.

“Like, that you would prove it to me.”

Mark bites hard at his lip, but still, he doesn’t speak. Still he stands there, looking up at Johnny with large, shining eyes, and holds his ground, tightens his fists.

Johnny can almost smell him, the mix of them both on him that only a shower could really take care of, and underneath it, so faint that Johnny thinks he’s just imagining it. Taeyong. He stares. He doesn’t ask Mark where he went.

“Like, that you meant it and it wasn’t just—a joke,” Johnny says.

That gets him a reaction. “I did and it wasn’t,” Mark says quickly, with one tiny glance towards Ten and Lucas, but the rest of his attention focused solely on Johnny. He takes the next step closer, so that they’re entering into “Superhuman” distance. “Johnny-hyung. I did mean it. I do mean it. It’s not a joke.”

Johnny laughs again, broken and bleeding on the inside, on the outside, opened up raw for everyone to see. “Well I’m certainly not laughing,” he says. It occurs to him that they’ve kept this conversation strictly in Korean. That Ten led in with Korean, that Mark continued in Korean, and none of them switched over. Lucas is a lot more fluent after nearly ten years around all of them, but Johnny doesn’t think it was about that. Johnny thinks it was about something else—something different, something he can’t even put into words. Johnny doesn’t remember what language they said I love you in, doesn’t know if it would _matter_ , if it is was the one they were born into, or the one they learned through trial and error, sink or swim. He laughs again and Mark takes it.

“Johnny-hyung,” Lucas says suddenly, and Johnny… almost forgot he was here, even though he was just thinking about his language proficiency. “Mark came to make you feel better—why are you—” He stops, looking between them with painfully confused eyes. “Why are you being like this—”

Ten interrupts, one brow raised, arms still angrily crossed. “Mark came to make him feel better?” he says. “Mark—Mark is the reason Johnny-hyung is even upset _in the first place_ —”

Lucas is looking between Ten and Mark now. “Hey, that’s unfair,” he starts to say, shifting to stand more alongside Mark. “Mark—”

“No, Xuxi, he’s right,” says Mark, and Lucas stops talking, expression a little unreadable.

Ten finally uncrosses his arms, and steps to face Mark head on. It puts him right next to Johnny, between him and Lucas, and Johnny clocks the look on Mark’s face when he gets within signaling distance. Whatever Ten’s putting off, it’s not pretty. Johnny doesn’t think he’s even aware of it, but Lucas certainly is. He looks like he wants to touch Ten, to try to pull him back.

“What am I right about, Mark Lee?” Ten says in mean, simple English.

Mark holds his head high. “I am the reason Johnny-hyung is upset,” he replies, also in English.

Johnny feels… raw hearing that, and he doesn’t know why.

“Well at least you’re self-aware,” Ten says. “Oh, wait.”

Mark definitely feels that one land because he takes a step back, and Johnny thinks Ten is actually going to follow him, but then Lucas really moves. “Hyung,” he says, to Ten, clearly, but also sort of to Johnny, like he can’t believe Johnny is just… letting this happen. “That’s… not true?”

Ten opens his mouth to respond, but it’s Mark who answers, Mark who says, “it is, Xuxi. Lucas. It is. I’ve been an awful person to Johnny-hyung.”

Ten looks utterly unimpressed. “Yes, and?” he says, his tone very ugly. 

Lucas reaches out and grabs Ten by the arm. “Hyung,” he says again.

Ten shakes him off. He turns to face Johnny, scans up and down Johnny like he’s a magnifying glass. “Oh, Johnny-hyung, no,” he says. “You’re not going to just let him—”

Johnny feels defensive and his hackles raise. “I think we should both talk about a lot of things,” he says. “Mark—” It feels like the first time he’s said Mark’s name all day, and Mark looks like he might cry. “—should say his part too,” Johnny finishes.

“Hyung—” Mark says, but Ten speaks over him. 

“Let me guess, you’re sorry,” he says. “You’re sorry and you still want to be friends—nothing has to change—” 

Lucas redoubles on his efforts to grab Ten, switching from just grabbing his arm, to almost hugging him.

Johnny lifts his own chin, stubborn and itching for a fight. “Ten,” he warns.

“Nothing has to change and everything can go right back to how it was,” spits Ten, with a dark look at Mark, who somehow doesn’t cower, somehow stands his ground. “How it’s been for the last _seven years_.”

Lucas gets Ten in a full back hug and stares at him, mouth open. “Ten-hyung,” he says.

Ten doesn’t pay him any mind. “With you treating him like your personal emotional support… _counselor_ ,” he continues. “Since lord knows it’s not a two way street.”

Mark’s looking between the two of them with his bottom lip so tightly between his teeth that Johnny thinks he’ll be bleeding in literal seconds.

“You get to _sleep with him_ , and tell him you _love him_ and then fucking walk out like it’s _nothing_ —”

Mark’s mouth drops open—there’s no blood; Johnny is so relieved there’s no blood; Johnny is focusing on such odd little details, what the fuck—and his cheeks burn bright, sudden red.

Even Lucas looks surprised, his hold loosening on Ten enough that Ten can get free and start to advance on Mark like some sort of angry, hissing cat. “Like he’s nothing. Like he hasn’t been in love with you for _seven years_ —”

“That’s enough, Ten,” Johnny says, voice hard and no-nonsense.

Ten halts, mid-word, mid-step, mid-snarl. The growl he makes in response feels more like self-comforting than anything else, but Mark still flinches away from it. He looks like he’s actually about to start crying, but also like he thinks he deserves to cry. Like he deserves to have Ten stand here and give it to him, in front of Johnny, in front of Lucas, like if Ten wanted to invite all of NCT 127 into the hotel room to watch him rake Mark over the coals, Mark would let him.

Johnny loves him like an ache, and he can’t watch. Can’t be complicit. Can’t let Ten fight his battles or burn his bridges. “It’s okay, Ten-ah,” he says again, in Korean this time.

Ten falls back into Lucas’ embrace, definitely self-comforting, and lets his hands fall to his side like a puppet with cut strings. When he looks at Johnny, he looks devastated. “Johnny-hyung,” he says. “What could he possibly say that could make this okay?” 

And Johnny just looks at him, tries to communicate with his eyes that it is okay, he’ll be okay, he can face this on his own. 

Ten shuts his mouth so hard his jaw clenches, but he stays quiet and in Lucas’ arms. Lucas is looking between the three of them like he’s on a variety show and been asked to act out a viral meme. But he’s also quiet, just watching, looking. For a long stretch of a second, they all just stand there, not moving. Ten tilts slightly in Lucas’ grip and Lucas starts stroking at the bare skin of Ten’s arm and Johnny lets himself start to sway back so that he’s not quite so in Mark’s face, not sure how he got there. He doesn’t think it was because he was trying to be menacing. He thinks it was defense, that it was… pure instinct, a reflexive reaction to the look on Mark’s face, the shake of Mark’s shoulders, the way he was ready to let Ten… hurt him, because he hurt Johnny.

It’s a long, long second.

It may even be more than two.

Mark’s the one who breaks the silence. “It’s true, though,” he says in English, and Johnny looks immediately at him. He holds his gaze, unflinching. “I did do that, though,” he says. “I—I’m sorry, Johnny-hyung,” he says.

Johnny sucks in a breath that rattles the cage of his lungs like an arrow going straight to his heart.

Mark’s looking at him with those shiny, desperate eyes, ignoring Ten, ignoring Lucas, only looking at Johnny, only beseeching Johnny. He would do it, in this room, with that audience, for Johnny. He would humiliate himself in front of their bandmates, would get up on stage in front of all their fans and confess his sins if Johnny asked him—Johnny can see it, Johnny can _see it_ , Johnny knows it in his bones. “Seven years?” asks Mark, and he sounds twenty years old. Nineteen years old. Seventeen. Young and afraid and unpresented, afraid to ask for his first kiss, a teenager in a foreign country, struggling to become fluent fast enough to keep up with his dreams.

Johnny can’t do this with an audience. He closes his eyes. He opens his eyes. He turns to look at Ten, who meets his gaze from the circle of Lucas’ arms and seems to crumple even further. 

“Youngho-hyung,” he says, like it’s his last defense.

“I lo—” Johnny tries to say and swallows the sentence before it can turn into tears. “Thank you, Ten-ah,” he says in Korean. “Lucas.”

Lucas nods, but his gaze is still fixed on Mark, eyes darting between his friend and the rest of them, concern coming off him in visible, if not odorous, waves.

“You can go back to… beach sex, now,” says Johnny.

Mark is the only one who laughs, and it’s a startled sort of thing that comes out of him like he didn’t expect it, let alone know he could make such a noise.

“Johnny-hyung,” says Ten again, still standing in Lucas’ arms, which have dropped to holding him around the waist now. It’s more like romantic slow dancing—like they were doing last night, at Jaehyun and Taeyong’s wedding.

Johnny looks at him and does his best to convey with his eyes how very grateful he is for Ten and all of his support, while still standing by his decision, the affection he has for Mark Lee that clearly isn’t going anywhere, metaphorical boxes be-damned.

Ten lets out a long, slow breath, but seems to calm. _I can still murder him and bury the body_ , his eyes say.

 _You don’t need to do that, but thank you_ , Johnny tries to say back with his own. He doesn’t know what he’d do without him.

Ten nods, then levels a hard stare at Mark. “Johnny-hyung is an amazing person,” he says, voice ringing crystalline in the hotel room. “And unfortunately, I happen to know you are too,” he says, with something like a smile, if not a true olive branch. “But you should know that I am watching you, Mark Lee,” he adds. “Don’t fuck it up.”

Johnny can’t quite believe this is happening, let alone happening before he and Mark have even had it out. Like, they still have to go back to Mark’s room and talk about it—Mark to give his explanations and Johnny to get everything out there and then end their friendship, probably, or whatever. (Some part of Johnny wants to hope, but he fights it down, shoves it into the closet of his mind, staples that box shut and says fuck you to Jeong Jaehyun for even coining the metaphor in the first place.)

But Mark… Mark is fucking… taking Ten seriously, lifting his head and fucking _nodding_. “I know,” he says. “I won’t, hyung.”

Johnny… Johnny takes Mark by the wrist and tries not to notice the way Mark’s heart speeds up, pretends he doesn’t feel the stutter of his pulse under his fingers. “We’re going,” he says, to Ten and Lucas and the room at large. He pretends _he_ doesn’t startle when Mark shifts his hand into Johnny’s so quick he can’t protest, links their fingers and squeezes. It’s a lot. Johnny’s bedraggled, beaten up box starts to quiver. He doesn’t have it in him to fight it into submission. “We’re going,” he says again.

He looks up. Ten is staring down at their linked hands with a truly unreadable expression on his face, but he does point between his and Mark’s eyes a few times as they start to actually leave, Johnny leading, and Mark following. The door clicks shut gently behind them, and Johnny turns, heading automatically back towards Mark’s room, still holding Mark’s hand.

Mark opens his mouth.

Johnny looks at him.

He actually smiles. “I know, shut up, right?” he says.

Johnny doesn’t laugh, but also doesn’t let go of his hand. Mark notices. He gives another tight squeeze and spends the rest of the walk in surprisingly calm silence.

Getting back to Mark’s room feels distinctly like going back in time, even though Mark produces his room key without comment and unlocks and opens the door in silence. He steps in first and Johnny follows, but they’re still connected by their hands so they end up standing awkwardly in the middle of the room staring at each other.

Mark doesn’t seem inclined to let go of Johnny’s hand any time soon, and Johnny doesn’t know if he wants to force the issue. He feels surprisingly calm, given his early morning breakdown. But his face feels swollen and his eyes feel puffy and Mark seems to finally really scrutinize him, and frowns. “Were you crying—”

“You said you wanted to talk?” Johnny says instead of going down that road.

Mark keeps frowning, nor does he release Johnny’s hand. “I didn’t leave,” he says.

Johnny stares at him. He opens his mouth.

Mark’s ears blush scarlet. “No, I know I left,” he says. “But I wasn’t _leaving_ ,” he says.

Johnny keeps staring at him.

“I just needed to panic about some things,” he says.

Johnny pauses. “Some things,” he says.

Mark looks down at his bare feet, seems to notice for the first time that they’re bare, and moves to grab his abandoned slippers over by the bed. The bed hasn’t been made—still looks how it looked when Johnny got out of it earlier that morning, and Johnny kind of doesn’t want to look at it. It’s good then that Mark refuses to give up Johnny’s hand, because he has to move with Mark, has to bend down as Mark picks up the slippers and slides them on.

“I love you, Johnny-hyung,” Mark says, when he’s done, with a painful amount of eye contact.

Johnny’s beyond his metaphors at this point. “Mark,” he says slowly, trying his best to convey with his eyes that he doesn’t have the patience to go through this all again.

“You’re probably my soulmate, Johnny-hyung,” Mark says, effectively putting a halt to all of Johnny’s mental faculties.

He debates putting his head in his hands and screaming a little, until all of this goes away and it’s just a really bad dream, like the ones he’d get before the first day of school. Johnny will put his head in his hands and scream and then he’ll open his eyes and it’ll be March 2026, December 2025, and Jaehyun will have barged into his room snarling about the fact that Taeyong still hasn’t freaking proposed to him and their anniversary is in literal _hours_. This will all have been a very weird dream; Johnny is just really nervous about Jaehyun and Taeyong’s wedding and is having nightmares about how wrong it can go.

“Johnny-hyung.” Mark’s looking at Johnny with actual amusement in his eyes, and Johnny wants to fight him. Something of that must show in his face, because almost instantly Mark looks chastened and guilty and apologetic all wrapped into one. “I was a really shitty person to you in 2019,” he says. “Before _Neo Zone_.”

Johnny blinks at him.

“You were my first kiss,” Mark continues. “And you were my first time.”

Johnny… doesn’t like to be reminded about that from people who weren’t involved, let alone the person in question, but he’s had to think about it so many times in the forty-eight hours leading up to and almost twelve hours after the Jaeyong wedding that he just might really scream.

“And you’ve been in love with me for seven years.”

Johnny isn’t going to deny that, thanks Ten.

“And I was a really shitty person,” Mark says. “I fully did not realize.”

Honestly, that’s a relief, because some part of Johnny was at least partly worried Mark had noticed, and just didn’t feel the same, and he was going to die alone and without love, even though he totally doesn’t buy that only one soulmate stuff the world is selling, and totally could probably one day have released his Mark Lee feelings into the wind and found someone he’d want to bite and spend the rest of his life with.

“I just thought you were being a good friend,” Mark blurts, clearly embarrassed about it.

Johnny looks at him and finds it in himself to finally be a little kind. “To be fair, I didn’t tell you, for seven years,” he says. That is what everyone’s been saying to him, for all seven of them. “You were an idiot, but I let you get away with it. For seven years.”

Mark raises both eyebrows. “You let me put my dick in you,” he says slowly. “In what universe was that subtle? I was an utter idiot.”

Johnny has the bizarre urge to fight Mark Lee in defense of Mark Lee. “Hey,” he says. “I was… am in love with that idiot.”

Mark doesn’t stand down, but he does flush. “Yes, well, I panicked,” he says. “You’re—” He pauses at the expression on Johnny’s face—most likely, the surprising amount of panic he feels at the thought of having to hear the words “my soulmate” come out of Mark’s mouth again. “—someone I want to spend the rest of my life with,” he finishes. “And I basically treated you like shit for seven years without even realizing.” He stops again, seemingly for effect. “Cue meltdown.”

Johnny blinks some more.

“You can text Jaehyun-hyung and Taeyong-hyung if you don’t believe me,” Mark says. “I kind of barged into their suite—I’m sure Jaehyun was not happy.”

Johnny isn’t going to that, but he can believe it. Mark would. Mark… did. Johnny feels hope bloom in his chest. “So, you left to go panic…” he begins.

“And then I was going to come right back once I’d finished,” says Mark eagerly, like admitting this level of social ineptitude is somehow a good thing. “You can text Doyoung-hyung too, actually, he was there.” That seems to give Mark pause, like it’s all finally caught up with him, the fact that he barged into Jaehyun and Taeyong’s _wedding suite_ on the day after their wedding. The sun hadn’t even been up for more than like an hour. They probably hadn’t been awake, or decent, or at all inclined to babysit a panicking Mark Lee.

“Huh,” says Johnny. His heart feels like it’s tap dancing around his ribcage.

“But I am really sorry, Johnny-hyung,” Mark says. “That I left you. That you thought I—” He makes a face, but says, bravely, “that I was such an awful friend to you that you thought I would have left you for real.”

Johnny just keeps staring at him, heart still going too fast not to be concerning, entire body starting to feel weightless. “Well, we can’t all be perfect,” he manages. “You’ve got the rapping, singing, and dancing. You couldn’t be socially blessed as well. It’d be unfair.”

For a moment, Mark looks like he just wants to laugh at his own expense, and then he says, with a very, very serious expression on his rapidly pinking face, “Well then what are you, then?” and Johnny feels like he’s floating.

“Mark Lee,” he says giddily, all the earlier hurt starting to be forgotten, all the earlier pain starting to be soothed. “Are you flirting with me?”

Mark can’t quite keep from protesting, but he rapidly turns the, “no,” into a, “yes.” He draws his shoulders back and stands to his full height. “I am,” he says. “I am flirting with you.”

Johnny can’t keep the grin off his face. “Who knew,” he says. “Mark Lee is a playboy.”

Mark’s ears are bright pink to match both cheeks, but he holds Johnny’s gaze very seriously. “I mean it, Johnny-hyung,” he says again, but this time, it feels like coming home after being away for far too long. “I’m going to prove it to you—for real, this time. I promise. No more panicking in Jaehyun-hyung’s bathroom while Taeyong-hyung is naked in their bed—”

Johnny takes it back; he is absolutely going to have to text Taeyong—

“I’m going to be the best… boyfriend ever,” says Mark, only stumbling slightly over the words.

Johnny takes two long strides until they’re nearly nose to nose, Mark’s head tipped back so he can stare at him, Mark’s eyes fluttering as they’re assaulted by the hotel room lights. “Are you?” Johnny says. “Are you my boyfriend, Mark Lee?” He sets both hands on Mark’s hips, gentle pressure, but pressure none the same.

Mark’s toes flex against the slippers. “Only because you get all funny when I call you my soulmate,” he mutters, and Johnny just has to kiss him. Johnny has to kiss him and kiss him and _kiss him_ , bend all the way down and ruck up his shirt to pet over bare skin, breathe him in until Mark’s gasping against Johnny’s mouth but still not asking for him to stop, not pushing him away, not fleeing the resort, not… ending their friendship, or locking Johnny’s heart in a coffin and dropping it into the Malacca Strait.

“It’s because it’s all so new, Mark-yah,” Johnny says, right up against Mark’s panting mouth, right up against Mark’s flushing cheek. “We’ve only been together for one day—”

“But you’ve been into me for seven years,” Mark protests, even as he tips his head to the side to get his hair out of his eyes.

“It doesn’t count because you were an idiot,” Johnny says.

Mark heaves a very long drawn out sigh, and then leans up to kiss Johnny one last time. It’s tiny and just a peck but it’s also Mark making the first move, and Johnny feels every inch of him light up.

Mark’s expression goes honestly reverent. “Oh,” he says, voice small. “You go all funny when I kiss you too.”

Johnny might just strangle him. “That’s going to get old fast, Mark Lee—”

Mark kisses him quiet again, then steps back with both hands behind his back in some sort of odd bit of self-comfort. “I don’t mean that in a bad way,” he says. “And it’s no fun, scoring really high. I notice all sorts of unfortunate things.”

Johnny thinks about the number of times they’ve all been trapped in cars with a post coital and or _mid coital_ Jaehyun and Taeyong, and winces. He thinks about the number of times Mark’s been trapped in a car with Lucas and Ten. He concedes the point. “I still think it’s unfair that you know what I smell like and I don’t,” he mutters.

“Like home,” says Mark instantly. “Like family. Like safety. Like—you know when it’s like four a.m. and the sun’s going come up way too soon, but Director-nim’s like ‘you’ve worked well!’ and everyone cheers and we all get to go home—and you’d never trade it for anything and late night shoots are fun, but the come down is almost better—” He stops talking abruptly, aware that he’s rambling. “You smell like that feels, Johnny-hyung,” he tells Johnny quietly. “I can’t believe it took me this long to notice.”

And Johnny just has to kiss him again, tumble him down onto the conveniently located and still mussed bed and roll around in it with him again, until they’re both dizzy from lack of oxygen, and the sun has dropped several latitudes down into the sky.

“I’m going to be the best boyfriend _ever_ ,” Mark tells him in between bruising kisses afterward, sprawled on his back fighting his instincts beautifully, looking mussed and so sexy Johnny could just scream. “I’m going to be the best boyfriend in the world. I’ll make it all up to you, Johnny-hyung, promise.” He looks pained for a moment, then rallies. “You’ll come so many times you won’t be able to see straight—”

“Okay, Mark, thanks, wow,” Johnny says, pink despite himself, and rolls them back around so they can kiss some more, gives himself over to Mark’s lips, and Mark’s hands, and the pulse of Mark’s hips.

After that they get up and relocate to the balcony, where they prop their feet up on the railing and gaze out at the ocean. Johnny puts on some music in the background and fools around on his phone; Mark settles in next to him with a notebook and write lyrics by hand; it’s nice, it’s normal, and wouldn’t be any different, if every so often Mark didn’t lean over and put his chin on Johnny’s shoulder to watch a video, or look at a Tweet from fans offering Jaehyun and Taeyong congratulations. If they weren’t occasionally holding hands, if Johnny didn’t know what it was like to kiss Mark, to make love to Mark, to be dating Mark.

He feels lighter than air. He keeps scrolling through Twitter. “Oh, hey, huh,” he says, when he gets an ad filled with pink flowers. “Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, right.”

Mark’s pen stills on his notebook paper, but he doesn’t look up.

Johnny risks a grin. “Our anniversary is Valentine’s Day,” he says. “Because today doesn’t count—yesterday was the real one.”

Mark lowers his pen and lifts his head, expression aghast.

Johnny’s stomach tightens but he shakes himself out of it, knowing that it’ll probably be at least a little while until he stops immediately fearing the worst, but once he gets over it it’ll be worth it. “What, were you kidding about being the best boyfriend in the world?” he says.

“Shut up. I’ll be better,” snaps Mark instantly. “You want roses? Ten thousand every year for the rest of your life—”

“That seems a little excessive—” Johnny tries to say.

“Our anniversary isn’t Valentine’s Day, Johnny-hyung,” Mark says right over him. “Our anniversary is _Jaehyun-hyung’s_ anniversary.” He stumbles. “And his _birthday_.”

There is a beat.

Johnny thinks about that. They did get together at Jaehyun’s Valentine’s Birthday wedding; this is true. “Huh,” he says. “Who’d have thought.”

Mark jabs him in the arm. “Yeah!” he says. “What the fuck are we going to do?”

Johnny stares at him, then crosses his legs neatly and leans back in his chair. “Yeah, that’s on you,” he says. “As the self-proclaimed injured party of the night’s events, I’m cashing in my diplomatic immunity.”

Mark’s looking between Johnny and Johnny’s phone like he’s speaking a language he doesn’t speak, and not just English.

“He’s your friend,” Johnny says. “You deal with it.”

Mark sputters. “Jaehyun’s _your friend too_.”

“Yes, but I was Taeyong’s best man,” Johnny says.

“They don’t even do best men in Korea!” Mark shouts. “You were Taeyong-hyung’s _fake_ _best man_!”

“But _you_ were Jaehyunnie’s fake best man.” Johnny points at him happily with his phone. “Ergo, it is your problem.”

“Hyung!”

“Mark-yah.”

“I—do I _tell him_?” Mark starts to fumble his own phone out of his pockets. “I should tell him,” he says. “I should tell him?” he asks. “How do I tell him?”

Johnny doesn’t really want to mention this, but he doubts either Jaehyun or Taeyong are going to be in any position to answer text messages any time soon, but then, who knows what level of damper Mark’s panic had put on things.

“I’m texting him,” Mark is saying. “I’m… I’m texting him?” He finishes doing just that, appears to hit send, then tips the screen around so Johnny can see where he’s blurted out, `So good news and bad news Johnny-hyung and I are dating now (yay) but we kind of got together last night so I guess we have the same anniversary now kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.`

The amount of keiuks really is rather excessive. Johnny fakes lowering a pair of glasses at Mark. “You don’t think you went overboard on the laughter?”

“It’s really funny, if you think about it,” Mark says, with a desperate little hitch to his breath as Jaehyun comes online and reads the message, the number next to it disappearing very accusingly. “Jaehyun-hyung will think it’s funny if he just thinks about it for a little—”

`You’re dead to me`, says Jaehyun simply, and Mark looks about a moment from a nervous breakdown.

“Wow, he even did that in English,” points out Johnny helpfully, as Mark turns the full force of his panic on him.

“Hyung!”

Johnny unlocks his own phone and pulls up his own private messages with Jaehyun. “You know what, that reminds me,” he says, scrolling to the top of the screen and tapping on the magnifying glass and inputting the words `it’s empty.` “I don’t know if you know this, but back when Taeyongie finally got his act together and popped Jaehyunnie’s cherry… bomb—”

Mark still has the ability to make a face about that, it seems, and Johnny feels very supported.

“—he sent me this frankly insulting .gif of a cat jumping out of a box—” The search hasn’t come up with anything, probably because Jaehyun stretched out the ending of that sentence, and Johnny sighs, testing out a few variations before giving up, and going to the internet. “That’s a thing we’ve been doing. Calling you and Taeyongie boxes.”

Mark blinks. “You what?”

“Anyway.” Johnny very gleefully finds what he’s ninety-percent certain is the same .gif and saves it to send to Jaehyun. “Karma is so very sweet.” He taps the plus, selects photo, taps the photo, then hits send. 

Mark’s staring over his shoulder, clearly still stuck on the box thing.

Johnny watches Jaehyun read his message as well, pleased.

`Lol`, Jaehyun says, in English. Johnny very helpfully shows Mark the phone.

Mark is incensed. “How come he’s not trying to murder you?” he says. “You were involved! It literally takes two to tango—you were complicit!”

“I’m not the one who had to wait seven years to figure out my feelings, though,” says Johnny seriously. “Clearly you are the instigator, and you chose to instigate at his wedding. On his birthday.”

“He’s the one who decided to get married on his birthday!” wails Mark.

“Actually, I’m pretty sure Taeyong did—

“Ha, if he told you that and you believed him, JohnJae nation is a fucking _joke_ —”

Johnny fake gasps. “How dare you!”

“Jaehyun’s sappier than Taeyong-hyung and you combined,” Mark says. “He just hides it under his cool guy exterior and his unfairly good looks.”

Johnny pauses. “Should I be worried about JaeMark nation?”

Mark rolls his eyes. “Haven’t you heard? That’s fake news,” he says. “It was—”

Johnny joins him gleefully—

“—just a hickey!” they both chorus and then grin, the tension finally dying. Mark scoots his chair even closer to Johnny’s and drops his head onto Johnny’s shoulder, setting his phone down on his thighs.

“You’ll protect me if Jaehyun-hyung really does try to murder me, though, right?” he says after a few moments of just this.

Johnny shifts around on his chair to get more comfortable. “Yeah, of course,” he says quietly. “But we don’t have to have our anniversary be yesterday. We could do today—or some day later, officially. Maybe even December—”

“That’s literally also Jaehyun-hyung’s anniversary, though,” Mark says, with the air of a man going to his death. “Because the only reason we had sex in the first place was because Jaehyun-hyung decided to go get knotted.”

“Ah yes,” says Johnny, somehow not laughing. “Well.”

Mark sighs, but then looks at Johnny, and grins. “I guess I’ll risk it,” he says. “You’re worth it.”

Johnny loves him so much he hates him. “Wow,” he says.

“Shut up,” Mark says.

“Wow,” Johnny says. “Mark Lee.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Mark says. “Tell me more about how I’m a box, Johnny-hyung.”

“I put my feelings for you in a metaphorical box for seven years, which was fine for the first few because Jaehyun had his feelings for Taeyong in his own, but then Lee ‘King of Panic’ Taeyong actually got his shit together _years before you did_ , so,” says Johnny.

Mark gapes at him.

“What?”

“Johnny-hyung,” Mark says.

Johnny grins and knocks their shoulders together. “Come on,” he says, getting to his feet and extending a hand. “I’m bored. Let’s go bother the band. Go find Ten and convince him not to help Jaehyunnie put a hit out on you.”

Mark takes Johnny’s offered hand and refuses to let go, groaning loudly. “Oh my God, Hyung, I actually thought he was going to fight me. Ten was terrifying.”

“But tiny,” Johnny says.

“But _terrifying_ ,” Mark says back.

They grab their keys, fluff their hair, and then are out the door, flip flops in tow.

Jaehyun doesn’t actually try to kill Mark in the lobby a bit later, and that’s only a little bit because of the fact that Johnny is there, holding his hand and looking, to quote the man himself, “sickeningly happy, Johnny-hyung, what the fuck?”

Doyoung very helpfully pauses where he’s been helping Lucas load suitcases into one of the cars taking a few members of Jaehyun’s family to the airport. “You literally are one to talk,” he says.

Jaehyun very happily flips him off.

Taeyong just tucks in close to Jaehyun’s side, grinning. He’s got his sunglasses perched on his head and the bite on his wrist practically on display, sleeveless and pretty in a tank top that Johnny’s a hundred percent certain is one of Jaehyun’s. “I’m really happy for you both, Johnny-hyung,” he says quietly. “Mark-yah.”

Mark ducks his head, but his grin is practically a second sun.

“I’m happy for you too,” Jaehyun says. “But if you so much as _think_ about doing something on July 1 I will _murder you_.” He smiles, dimples popping out on either side of his mouth, before dragging his new husband off to help Doyoung with a particularly difficult suitcase.

“So… what do you think of a July wedding?” asks Mark happily.

“Murder,” calls Jaehyun loudly, before Taeyong goes up on his toes and kisses him. Yuta coos and pulls out his phone to take more videos for Instagram and Twitter.

Johnny swings Mark’s hand around between them. “Dunno,” he says, so happy he can’t stop smiling. “Ask me in seven years.”

“Haha, very funny,” says Mark.

“You love me,” says Johnny.

“I do,” says Mark simply.

Johnny glows. 

**Author's Note:**

> THEY DID IT! IT ONLY TOOK THEM SEVEN YEARS! 
> 
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